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2011 IEEE International Electric Machines & Drives Conference (IEMDC)

Design and Analysis of Axial Flux Permanent Magnet BLDC Motor for Automotive Applications.
Sreeju S Nair, Shamsuddeen Nalakath, Member, IEEE, and Samraj Jabez Dhinagar, Member, IEEE

AbstractThe selection and design of motor for electric and hybrid vehicle is very important as the motor in this application should posses high power density, higher efciency, t in to limited space, and supreme heat removal capacity. One of the better selection for this kind may be an axial ux brush less DC motor. In this paper, an axial ux brush less DC motor is chosen for the study. A preliminary design is arrived based on the magnetic circuit and power balance equations. Then the Finite Element Analysis of the preliminary design is carried out. It is found from the FEA that the preliminary design can be rened. The major renement is on shape of the magnet, and minor on shape of the slot and slot width. The different magnets shapes are studied and optimal shape is proposed which reduces the cogging torque. The performance of the motor (rened design) found from FEA is compared with the specied values and found that designed motor meets the requirements. Index TermsElectromagnetic analysis, Electromagnetic induction, Finite element methods.

I. I NTRODUCTION As the conservation of the natural resources and protection of nature are the paramount concerns nowadays, several automotive companies in the world started introducing Electric and Hybrid Vehicles (EV and HV). Primary benets of these vehicles are fuel savings & signicant reduction in emission as compared to a purely IC engine based vehicles. This growing interest in EV/HV vehicles has driven researchers and engineers towards development of more efcient and reliable drive system. Traditional drive system for EVs/HVs are composed of batteries, electric motors with drives, and transmission gears to wheels. Each subsystem converts chemical, electrical or mechanical energy into different forms, thus consuming energy through the dissipation components such as friction, copper, core, switching, and windage losses. So it is essential to look at an approach to improve the overall efciency of EVs/HVs by reducing the losses, and hence to improve the performance and increasing the driving range. One of the key subsystem is an electric motor whose design and packaging are completely different from the standard industrial motors. The design should meets higher efciency and power density, and it should be thermally stable. The packaging should be dust & water proof and also provide good ventilation. Among the various motor candidates, [1]-[2] provide an expert survey and concluded that induction motor drives are preferable for EV propulsion. However, the permanent magnet Brush Less DC motor (BLDC) features compactness, low weight and high efciency and therefore an alternative for EV propulsion. In hybrid vehicles with motor mounted in engine makes the packaging even more difcult due to limited space, in this case, an Axial Flux BLDC (AFBLDC) is the better solution

since it has power density better than Radial Flux BLDC [3][4]. An AFBLDC also posses balanced rotor-stator attractive forces, better heat removal conguration, and adjustable air gap [3]-[4]. An AFBLDC motor consists of a rotating disc on which the magnets are placed and slotted stator core coaxial with the rotating disc accommodates coil conductors. There are different topologies available for AFBLDC like single air gap, double air gap, one disc & two stator core, and two disc & one stator core. In this study, single air gap topology is chosen. The design of AFBLDC is arrived basically from the magnetic circuit and power balance equations subjected to the constraints of tooth ux density, coil current density, driving voltage and available space [3]-[5]. An important phenomena to be taken care of in the design process is torque ripple. The torque ripple is caused by the interaction of permanent magnets with salient stator core (cogging) and interaction of the permanent magnets with space harmonics of the winding layout & current harmonics (simply referred as torque ripple). There are methods discussed [6]-[8] to reduce the cogging torque involves using a fractional number of slots per pole, skewing of magnets and / or stator slots, displacing and shaping the magnets, optimizing the magnet pole-arc-to-polepitch ratio, introducing auxiliary slots or teeth. This paper discuss the magnetic circuit of AFBLDC motor and presents the main design equations. Based on these equations a preliminary design of the motor is presented. To evaluate the preliminary design FEA is carried out. By close investigation of FEA results it is observed that renements on the preliminary design are essential. The major renement is on the shape of the magnet and minor on shape of the slot and slot width. The performance of the rened design is analyzed. The magnetic circuit is presented in section II and preliminary design details are presented in section III. Section IV presents FE modeling and the results. The conclusion of the work is presented in section V. II. M AGNETIC C IRCUIT M ODEL Fig. 1 shows the AFBLDC motor topology showing geometrical denitions. A disc shaped rotor with the sector shaped permanent magnets pasted on the surface facing the stator. The ux leaving from the center magnet divides by two and enters in to the two adjacent magnets through air gap, stator iron and returns to the source through air gap and rotor iron as shown in Fig. 2. The magnetic circuit for this ux loop is presented in Fig. 3 (a). Fig. 3(b) shows the simplied circuit diagram by

978-1-4577-0061-3/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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In axial ux machines, the magnetic area is a function of magnet shape and it can be found as
Ro

Am =
Ri

2 ( r r dr (2P )

(5)

By assuming trapezoidal, the motor back emf is then written as 2 2 Eb = Nm kd kp ks Bg Nspp ns (Ro Ri )wm (6) Where, kd , kp , ks are distribution, pitch and skew factor respectively, Nm is number of poles, Nspp is number of slots/pole/phase and ns is number of turns/slot. Since two phases are operated at a time in BLDC motors, back emf constant can be written as
2 2 Ke = 2Nm kd kp ks Bg Nspp ns (Ro Ri )

Fig. 1.

Axial ux BLDC motor topology showing geometrical denitions.

(7)

Developed electromagnetic torque is T = Ke I where I is dc coil current.


Fig. 2. Magnetic Path.

(8)

III. PRELIMINARY DESIGN A preliminary design is arrived with the help of design equations derived basically from the magnetic circuit and power balance equations. The designed motor should meet the required torque-speed prole of a typical automotive application shown in Fig. 4 and specication is presented in Table I. The current density should be kept less than 9A/mm2 and the maximum ux density in the stator teeth to be under 1.8T to prevent saturation. The rotor back iron can be made as a part of crank shaft for HV applications or the other method is to assemble the rotor on the transmission for both EV and HV applications become the space constraints for the design. Table II shows the preliminary design.

neglecting stator and rotor reluctances since these are having high permeability.

Fig. 3.

(a) Axial BLDC motor magnetic circuit, (b) simplied one.

From the simplied magnetic circuit air gap ux can be derived as 1 g = r (1) m 1+ P Pg Where Pg is the air gap permeance and Pm is the equivalent magnet permeance (Pm + Pm l). The expression of g can be rewritten by substituting the expressions of the permeance as g = 1 1+
r Kc Km l 2Pc

(2)

Where Pc is the permeance coefcient, kc is the crater coefcient and Km l is magnet leakage factor. Pc = lm 2gC (3)

Fig. 4.

Required torque-speed prole of the motor.

IV. FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS The preliminary design is modeled in FE based electromagnetic software CEDRAT, FLUX. As the motor is having th electromagnetic symmetry only 1/8 portion is modeled. The constructed geometry and meshed model is shown in Fig. 5. In

Flux concentration factor C is based on the air gap area (Ag ) and magnet area (Am ). C = Am Ag (4)

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TABLE I M OTOR S PECIFICATION Specication Rated speed Rated torque Max speed Rated output power Operating voltage Motor weight Values 2500 rpm 17 Nm 4000 rpm 4.5 KW 48 V <10 Kg

TABLE II P RELIMINARY D ESIGN Magnet outer radius (mm) Magnet Inner radius (mm) Magnet Length (mm) Air gap length (mm) Slot depth (mm) Slot opening (mm) Slot opening depth (mm) Teeth width at outer diameter(mm) Teeth width at outer diameter(mm) Teeth width at inner diameter(mm) Stator back iron radius (mm) 75.0 37.5 4.0 2.0 30.0 2.25 2.0 17.0 17.0 8.5 10 Fig. 7. (a) Back emf by using sector magnets, (b) back emf after shaping magnets and slots. Fig. 6. Shaded ux density plot.

the rst step, the static electromagnetic analysis of this model is carried out and ux density distribution is studied. It is found that the tooth can be narrow down to accommodate wide conductors in the slot as compared to preliminary design thereby reducing the coil resistance and copper loss. Fig. 6 is the shaded ux density plot of the model with modied model it is seen that the teeth ux density is not exceeding 1.8 T

In the third step, a driver circuit is attached with the model. Then the model is solved at different speed. The input power, output power, efciency, electromagnetic torque, terminal voltage and supply current are found FEA and plotted in Fig. 10. The terminal voltage variation is due to battery drop. Fig. 11 shows the phase currents and electromagnetic torque with respect to the rotor angular position. Table III presents the design parameters found from preliminary design (by equations) and FEA. The values from both approach shows good correlation hence justies the preliminary design.
TABLE III C OMPARISON PRELIMINARY ( ANALYTICAL ) AND FEA Parameters Phase resistance (Rph) Phase inductance (Lph) Preliminary Design 0.0172 56H 0.079(Vs/Rad) 0.83 T FEA 0.02 77H 0.072(Vs/Rad) 0.775 T

Fig. 5.

FE simulation model, (b) meshed model.

Back emf constant (Kb) Air gap ux density (Bg)

In the second step, the model is then analyzed with motion by rotating the rotor at a constant speed while keeping the stator coils open circuit.The back emf plotted from FEA is not exactly trapezoidal and distorted with harmonic contents as shown in Fig. 7(a). It is observed from analyses that by shaping the slot and magnet, the back emf waveform can be improved as shown in Fig. 7(b). Fig. 8 shows the shapes of the slot and magnet chosen for preliminary design and proposed one. The magnet and slot shaping subsequently beneted in reduction of the average cogging torque by 20% as shown in Fig. 9

V. C ONCLUSION An axial eld permanent magnet motor has been designed for automotive applications. The preliminary analytical design of the motor presented helps in building an outline structure of the motor before doing the more accurate FEA. FEA helped to rene the design by shaping the slots and magnets and by doing so the back emf waveform is improved and cogging torque is reduced. The motor performance found from FEA is analyzed and the values are coming in the desired range.

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Fig. 8.

(a) Preliminary design shape, (b) Proposed shape.

Fig. 10. FEA.

Predicted performance characteristics of the proposed design from

Fig. 9.

Cogging torque comparison.

R EFERENCES
[1] L. Chang, Comparison of AC Drives for Electric Vehicles - A Report on Experts Opinion Survey, IEEE AES Systems Magazine, pp. 7-10, Aug. 1994. [2] C.C. Chan, K.T. Chau, J.Z. Jiang, W. Xia, M.Zhu and R. Zhang, Novel Permanent Magnet Motor Drives for Electric Vehicles, International Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 43, No. 2, pp.331-338, 1996. [3] Jackek F Gieras, Rong-Jie Wang, Maarten J. Kamper, Axial Flux Permanent Magnet Brushless Machines, Kluwer academic publishers, 2004. [4] Duane C. Hanselman, Brushless Permanent- Magnet Motor Design, McGraw-Hill, Inc, 1994. [5] J.R. Hendershot Jr and Tje Miller, Design of Brushless Permanent Magnet Motors, Oxford science publication, 1994. [6] L. Dosiek, P. Pillay, Cogging torque reduction in permanent magnet machines, IEEE Trans. Industry Application, vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 1656 1571, 2007. [7] D. A. Gonzalez, J. A. Tapia, A. Letelier, Desing Consideration to Reduce Cogging Torque in Axial Flux Permanent-Magnet Machines, IEEE Trans. Magnetics, vol. 43, no. 8, pp. 3435 3440, 2007. [8] Z. Q. Zhu, Inuence of Design Parameters on Cogging Torque in Permanent Magnet Machines. IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, vol. 15, no. 4, pp 407-412, 2000. Fig. 11. (a) Phase currents, (b) Electromagnetic torque.

Samraj Jabez Dhinagar obtained his doctoral degree in the area of new combustion technology for diesel engine from Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of technology, Madras. He worked for Engineering Research Center, Tata Motors Ltd., India, there he worked in developing one of the engine family of indica. After 9 years he joined GE Transportation and worked as a technical lead in engine control system. Presently he is with TVS Motor Company Ltd., India as the Vice President of Advanced Engineering Group taking care of new product development and technology development.

Shamsuddeen N obtained his master degree from Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of technology, Madras in 2010. Currently he is working in as motor design engineer in R&D, TVS Motor Company Ltd, India. His research interest are in special electrical machines for automobile application, power converters and drives.

Sreeju S Nair obtained his master degree from Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of technology, Madras in 2006. He has been working in as motor design engineer in R&D, TVS Motor Company Ltd, India since 2006. His research interest are in special electrical machines for automobile application, power converters and drives.

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