Track: Undergraduate Research Competition

Abstract

A Permanent magnet BLDC motor has been designed with different rotor configurations based on the arrangement of the permanent magnets such as step skewing Halbach continuous ring/sinusoidal array. Rotor magnet arrangement configuration strongly influences the torque and efficiency performance of permanent magnet electric motors. This paper is to compare and evaluate different rotor configurations for PM BLDC motors with parallel/radial and Halbach continuous ring/sinusoidal array permanent magnets. Many applications for electric drives or electric aircraft prefer surface-mounted permanent magnet design due to its ease of construction and maintenance [3-7]. A finite element method has been used for the analysis and comparison of different geometry parameters and rotor magnet configurations to improve efficiency and torque performance. This paper describes a comprehensive design of a three-phase PMBLDC motor with 15 kW for an in-wheel electrical drive. An FEA simulation of the PMBLDC motor has been implemented to evaluate their designs. In this paper, the step-skewing and Halbach magnet array are applied to the PM surface-mounted Brushless DC Motor for eliminating torque ripples. To observe the skewing rotor effect, the rotor slayers are skewed with different angles and a Halbach sinusoidal/continuous ring array. With a determined skewing angle, the cogging torque is eliminated theoretically, and back EMF harmonics are also analyzed. After several design validation, a suitable design will be selected for pilot manufacture.