I-Corps: High - Reliability and Low - Cost Design of Electric Motor for Automotive Industry Application

University Of Akron, Akron OH

Investigators

Abstract

The recent need for clean energy and the decreasing availability of fossil fuels have resulted in a noticeable progress in research and application of power generation based on alternative energy sources. Electric Motors and Generators are important components in the green technology, generating or consuming majority of the electric energy from alternative energy sources, especially in public transportation area including automotive industry and aerospace industry. As the rare-earth-material-based three-phase electric machine has been popularly applied to the public transportation systems (for power management, energy storage, etc.) where safety is a priority, cost and reliability have also become critical market issues. This I-Corps team's focus is, therefore, on the design of high-reliability, low-cost electric machines that are fault-tolerant and free of rare-earth materials to meet the needs of target market segmentation in automotive industry. The target product will be a Rare-earth material Free Multiphase Synchronous reluctance Motor (FMSM). Unlike the conventional low-power machine, which is designed as a single- or three-phase machine, the proposed multiphase motor is designed using a 5-phase architecture, an optimal solution to provide the lowest cost and highest reliability among all theoretically and practically available low-power machines in the market. The proposed architecture also provides compact size and extended lifetime with reduced electro-magnetic interferences (EMI). To further reduce manufacturing costs, Rare-earth materials will be substituted by Ferrite materials. Ferrite materials are abundant in nature and about 10 times cheaper than Rare-earth materials. In addition, the output power will be generated based on an innovative and alternative torque generation mechanism which will lead to further reduced costs in material utilization while significantly simplifying the design.