Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Research Objectives and Approach - Electric motors account for more than 60% of the electricity consumed and electric machines and associated power electronic drives represent a multi-billion dollar industry. The project will develop transformational concepts for electric machines and power electronic drives that will leverage the latest breakthroughs in wide band gap power electronic devices. Two axial flux machine topologies, which are best fitted to use a very large number of poles and operate with fundamental frequencies up to the kHz range, are proposed. One construction, suitable for high-speed operation, employs a coreless stator with an innovative continuous-wire single-ended coil waved arrangement in multiple layers using flexible printed circuit boards or carbon nano-tube wires. Another construction, suitable for lower-speed direct drives, employs a ferromagnetic core with a special profile facing the rotor-stator air-gap and with a reduced number of teeth and coils and with the number of rotor poles one order of magnitude higher, far exceeding the capabilities of known topologies. Permanent magnet rotors leveraging 3D printing technology or plastic injection molding in order to produce novel configurations of quasi-Halbach arrays or buried magnets are also proposed. An innovative two-phase configuration in which hybrid H-bridges comprise one leg with wide band gap devices and the other one with silicon devices is proposed for integration with the new electric machines. Computational studies include multi-physics analysis for electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical stress, and differential evolutionary algorithms for mathematical optimization, and systematic comparison of thousands of candidate designs. The outcomes are ultra-high power density and efficient electric machine - drive systems.
Intellectual Merit - Raising the fundamental operating frequency for electrical machines results, in principle, in increased power density, provided that the typical challenges of higher losses, lower material utilization, and more complicated constructions, which are specific to conventional designs, can be overcome. The research will provide innovative solutions in this respect and establish the performance limits achievable through a synergetic combination of transformational design concepts and the latest developments in power electronic devices. The project will include high polarity machine laboratory demonstrators for two representative applications - high speed, and low-speed direct drive, respectively, achieving more than 100% increase in power density as compared with state-of-the-art designs.
Broader Impacts - A main benefit of the research will be the development of fundamental knowledge that will ultimately result in high-efficiency and compact electric machines. The project will train graduate and undergraduate research students and also includes an educational plan for teaching and academic curriculum development. The dissemination to the wider scientific and engineering community includes tutorials and short courses for industry and graduate students. The PI and co-PI will add new activities to their on-going STEM middle and high school outreach activities and increase their efforts to attract students, including women and minorities, to higher education in science and engineering.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 10/1/18 → 9/30/23 |
Funding
- National Science Foundation: $375,214.00
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