Stator Design and Air Gap Optimization of High Speed Drag-Cup Induction Motor using FEM

Abstract

A huge number of modern applications nowadays require the use of high speed electrical machines which need to be highly optimized in order to achieve the best efficiency and the lowest mass and price. The low rotor inertia is also an important requirement in order to reduce rotor kinetic energy. The subject of this paper is high speed drag-cup induction motor (IM) with low inertia which is designed for use as an auxiliary motor in automotive systems such as Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) in Formula 1. This work presents the procedure for stator design and optimization of the air gap length and rotor thickness of this kind of motor in order to achieve the highest efficiency in the speed range of interest. Simple procedure for stator dimensioning was developed and it was shown how the optimal number of stator conductors could be calculated. The effect of change in rotor thickness and air gap lengths on motor performance is demonstrated through some analytical considerations. The machine is then modeled in FEM software by means of which the optimization of the air gap and rotor thickness was performed. At the end, the simulation results were presented and analyzed and conclusions were drawn.

Keywords

• finite element methods
• induction motor
• high speed machines
• low inertia
• optimization