On Electric Machinery for Integrated Motor Drives in Automotive Applications

Abstract: Compact, electric drives for automotive traction applications represent animportant enabler towards realizing tomorrow’s fossil free transport solutions.One attractive solution is to integrate the power electronic converter withits associated electric machinery into a single unit. This thesis, along withits appended papers, considers design and analysis of electric machinery forintegrated electric drives intended for automotive applications. Particular focusis put on permanent-magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) with interiormountedpermanent magnets combined with modular converter topologies.In the first part of the thesis, different converter concepts and windingarrangements suitable for an integrated drive are reviewed. Compared to theconventional solution utilizing a three-phase two-level converter, a compactintegration can be implemented by physically splitting the converter and itsassociated dc-link capacitor into a number of converter submodules. Moreover,a modular concept also enables a certain level of fault tolerance.In the second part of the thesis, fractional-slot concentrated windings(FSCWs) are analyzed. First, a review for how to determine suitable slot, pole,and phase combinations is identified considering mainly the winding factor forthe main harmonic and the associated rotor losses. Then, integrated modularconverter concepts and associated winding configurations are considered andslot, pole and phase combinations that also comply with the consideredmodular converters are proposed. Further, two possible winding arrangementssuitable for the stacked polyphase bridges (SPB) and the parallel polyphasebridges (PPB) type converter are compared with respect to torque duringpost-fault operation in the event of failure of a single converter submodule.In the third part, an iterative process adopting both finite element analysisand analytical techniques is proposed for the design of PMSMs with interiormountedpermanent magnets and FSCWs. The resulting machine designsillustrate tradeoffs in terms of fault tolerance, power factor, torque density,and potential for field-weakening operation. From a given set of specifications,an experimental prototype is also designed and built.Finally, since a FSCW generally results in a large harmonic content ofthe resulting flux-density waveform, models for predicting eddy-current lossesin the permanent magnets are analyzed and compared. Particularly, modelsadopting different formulations to the Helmholtz equation to solve for the eddycurrents are compared to a simpler model relying on an assumed eddy-currentdistribution. Boundaries in terms of magnet dimensions and angular frequencyare also identified in order to aid the machine designer whether the mostsimple loss model is applicable or not. With a prediction of the eddy-currentlosses in the permanent magnets together with a corresponding thermal model,predicted volumetric loss densities exemplified for combinations of slot andpole numbers common in automotive applications are presented along withthe associated thermal impact.