Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The proposed collaborative research and development (R&D) project between the University of Windsor (UofW) and Magna International Inc. (MAGNA) aims at producing efficient, economic, light-weight and high-performance flexible traction AC electric motor drives for electrified vehicle (EV) application. Extensive research will be conducted by the UofW team with strong support from the industry to prototype scaled-down traction motor drives in an effort to verify the proposed novel design concept in terms of the use of new generation power electronics components, power converter topology, modulation strategy, control techniques, etc. Then, a full-scale traction motor drive prototype will be designed and developed by researchers from both teams by incorporating the theoretical and experimental research outcomes. MAGNA team will also provide support towards thermal management, layout and packaging of the traction motor drives. Highly qualified personnel including 2 MASc and 3 PhD students, 1 post-doctoral fellow and 1 research engineer from the UofW team will be trained during the project period of 2 years and 5 months. They will interact with the experts from MAGNA on a weekly basis. The research outcomes of this project will directly benefit the industry partner capture the EV traction motor drive market due to improved motor drive performance. Moreover, this project will provide positive solutions towards extending the driving range and reducing the overall cost of electrified vehicles. This will help accomplish the goals of motivating consumers towards electrified vehicles and reducing greenhouse gas emission in Canada and globally.*