Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

There has been considerable progress in electrified transportation in recent years, including air, marine and ground applications. The heart of these systems is the electrical machine. The types of machine technologies adopted for traction and auxiliaries varies considerably by manufacturer and application. Induction, permanent magnet and switched reluctance have all been adopted with the synchronous reluctance receiving serious attention. Power density and reliability are key issues for marine and aircraft applications. The proposal will address three important areas of machine design for electrified transportation: a) Investigation of new topologies of electrical machines using novel materials and manufacturing techniques, b) detailed design of the variable flux machine, a new candidate for traction and c) the development of a novel core loss tester to measure the losses of electrical machines after assembly. In a) novel cold spray manufacturing of permanent magnets will be investigated so that arbitrary shapes and sizes may be printed onto or into an electrical machine. 3-D flux paths and novel shapes to reduce cogging torque are some of the areas to be explored. This equates to 3-D printing of parts of the machine. The PI also proposed a new concept in variable flux machines and numerous advances to this initial idea are proposed. In b) the idea of developing a hybrid between a variable flux and regular PMSM is explored. The idea is to retain the ability to magnetize and demagnetize the magnet with an external pulse, thus providing flux control while alleviating some of the drawbacks associated with the low coercive force, in particular inadvertent demagnetization with armature flux. The PI has done considerable work in the measurements and calculation of core losses in machines and c) addresses the key question of losses in a machine that has already been assembled as opposed to the laminations. All the previous works on core losses by the PI have been on laminations. However significant changes in properties can occur as a result of manufacturing and hence a novel tester is proposed to determine these losses. The HQP trained by the PI have all been absorbed into local industry, government laboratories or academic positions around the world. The employment by local industry in particular has a direct benefit to Canada. The area of electrified transportation in particular is of vital importance to Canada and is part of the vision of Concordia University and Québec.