Electric Machine Design Solutions

Ansys facilitates comprehensive system integration by seamlessly transferring data from design through analysis and validation to final verification stages. This process mimics human-like testing, ensuring thorough system simulation within a unified workflow.

Given the conflicting requirements of various physics processes in motor design, consolidating all analyses into a single platform is essential. The platform’s primary objective is to evaluate potential designs based on their performance across electromagnetic (EM), structural, thermal, and noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) analyses.

This integrated approach enables the identification of an optimal design that meets all performance targets across different physics domains. Within Ansys Workbench, a unified coupling workflow is established to facilitate seamless data exchange between analyses.

Following electromagnetic (EM) analysis, loss data is transferred to Ansys Fluent for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, specifically evaluating cooling through a water-jacket in the motor housing. This analysis provides surface temperature insights crucial for subsequent analyses.

A two-way feedback connection, illustrated in the workflow, links EM and CFD analyses, enabling temperature effects on various quantities to be iteratively refined. Temperature data is further integrated into structural and NVH modules, enhancing accuracy in stress calculations and acoustic noise predictions.

Electric machine configurations necessitate suitable electric drive circuits, and the devised electric apparatus must be compatible with both the electric drive and the digital control setup. Ansys presents a solution that facilitates co-simulation design for electrical machines alongside power electronics and control systems. Specifically, Ansys Maxwell can be seamlessly integrated with Ansys Simplorer, allowing for concurrent simulation during transient studies. This functionality empowers engineers to scrutinize intricate interplays among power electronics, control mechanisms, and magnetic elements. Moreover, it enables the assessment of the impact of motor nonlinearities on the drive control loop executed within the circuit simulation.

FEA Fidelity with Circuits and Systems Simplorer and Twin Builder

• Circuit Simulation
• Block Diagram Simulation
• State Machine Simulation
• VHDL-AMS Simulation
• Model Libraries
• Analog and power electronics components
• Control blocks and sensors
• Mechanical and hydraulic components
• Digital and logic blocks

Electric machine design poses a challenge involving multiple physical phenomena. The incorporation of multi-physics capabilities expedites the design timeline, enhances precision, and facilitates the optimization of electrical machine performance even prior to crafting the initial physical prototype. Ansys Motor-CAD boasts this multi-physics prowess right from the initial design phases, enabling streamlined multi-objective design optimization and offering swift adaptation to evolving demands. The software encompasses electromagnetic, thermal, mechanical, and laboratory modes, proficiently generating efficiency maps and performance evaluations across various drive cycles.

Multiphysics:  Loss Mapping – Temperature – Thermal Analysis

• Ansys Granta for Managing & Selecting Material
• Advanced Materials Reference Data
• Manage Restricted Substances in Bill of Materials
• Access to the EMIT consortium
• Provide advanced magnetic materials library for electric machines solution

Acquire Fast and Optimal Cooling for Reliable and Efficient Electric Motors

Simultaneously consider all electromagnetic, structural/acoustic, and thermal design performance metrics using accurate CFD/thermal solutions that enable faster, more reliable, and more efficient electric machine designs. Avoid build-and-test by modeling and analysis to minimize testing and prototyping only to a subset of best design points.

• Predict the thermal performance of air and liquid cooling (including oil spray and water jackets)
• Assess the interdependency of bi-directional electromagnetic and thermal physics coupling.
• Predict temperature distribution in critical components like windings, magnets, and laminations with high-performance computing (HPC)

Simulation Workflows for E-Motor Thermal Using CFD

NVH Analysis

• Noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) arising from electric machines can originate from diverse origins and significantly impact how a product is perceived in terms of quality.
• As the reduction of noise from one source progresses, other sources begin to hold more significance.
• Developing a high-performance electric machine that exhibits favorable sound qualities demands a comprehensive engineering strategy that encompasses both the motor’s magnetic design and the structural/acoustic composition of the housing and supports.

This design procedure can be evaluated through simulation, which enables the concurrent fine-tuning of motor and housing parameters to attain noise-related objectives.

Fatigue Analysis

Ansys nCode DesignLife seamlessly collaborates with Ansys Mechanical to consistently assess the fatigue lifespan of components. By utilizing outcomes derived from finite element analysis (FEA) conducted in Ansys Mechanical and Ansys LS-DYNA, it aggregates wear caused by repetitive loads to ascertain the anticipated lifespan of a product. This process enables swift assessment of various materials and alternative shapes for novel designs, facilitating their optimization according to the intended usage of the product — all well in advance of constructing the initial prototype or incurring costly testing procedures.

Stress and Deformation

The main goal is to reduce mechanical stress to be less than the yield strength of the material. A comparison of the Motor-CAD mechanical model versus the Ansys Mechanical model is illustrated below for a V-shape IPM motor. It shows very good agreement in the maximum stress.

Optimization Solution Approaches

Multiple Physics or Multi-Physics Solved in Workbench

• Optimize a single motor geometry to meet multiple physics requirements.
• Investigate the effect of the motor as a system with interacting physics.