Oriented steel has higher permeability and lower losses in the direction of orientation (the rolling direction) than non-oriented steel. However, in the transverse direction, oriented steel typically has lower permeability and higher losses. The strategic use of oriented steel in a modular Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine (PMSM) stator can improve machine performance, particularly when compared to a machine designed with non-oriented steel, by increasing both torque and efficiency. Typically, steel manufacturers provide magnetic properties only in the rolling and transverse directions. Furthermore, in modern Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software, the magnetic properties between the rolling and transverse directions are interpolated using an intrinsic mathematical model. However, this interpolation method has proven to be inaccurate; to resolve this issue, an improved model was proposed in the literature. This model requires the magnetic properties of the oriented steel in between the rolling and transverse directions. Therefore, a procedure for extracting the magnetic properties of oriented steel is required. The objective of this work is to propose a method of determining the magnetic properties of oriented steel beyond just the oriented and transverse directions. In this method, flux-injecting probes, also known as sensors, are used to inject and control the flux density in an oriented steel segmented stator in order to extract the properties of the oriented steel. These extracted properties are then used to model an oriented steel modular stator PMSM. The machine’s average torque and core losses are compared with conventional, non-modular, non-oriented steel stator PMSM, and modular, non-oriented steel stator PMSM. It is shown that both the average torque and the core loss of the oriented steel modular stator PMSM have better performance at the selected number of segments than either of the two non-oriented steel stators.

Problem: Leakage of the transmission fluid or oil in powertrain systems (i.e., transmissions, cylinder heads, engine blocks, etc.) can cause engine overheating and/or permanent damage. Therefore, it is crucial to run a leak test to inspect for any possible porosity in the casting parts. However, the inspection results for the amount of leakage at given testing times are sensitive to the tested part's temperature, which varies from part to part but was not previously incorporated in the leak testing systems. The objective of this paper is to develop a robust leak testing system that is insensitive to the part temperature variations in real production processes. Approach: In the production line, a part is tested at a temperature that is generally not equal to the calibration temperature at which the inspection threshold for leakage was set. To achieve a robust leak test that is insensitive to temperature variation in the tested part, we propose a temperature compensation algorithm to adjust the measured leak flow, taking into account the tested part temperature and the calibration temperature. For this purpose, a nonlinear mixed-effect model is first developed for modeling the leak flow profile as a function of both the leak testing time and the part temperature. Then, the fitted mixed-effect model is used to adjust the leak flow based on the calibration temperature. If the amount of the adjusted leakage at the given inspection time exceeds the inspection threshold, the part is rejected; otherwise, the part is accepted. Results: The proposed compensation algorithm is developed and validated using a set of training samples and another set of test samples, respectively. We use the percentage of error reduction in the leak flow measurements at different temperatures as the criterion to validate the developed compensation algorithm. The results show that the average percentage of error reduction for the test samples is about 92%. This indicates a significant improvement in the leak testing results.

Machine tool accuracy and repeatability is one of the most important considerations for manufacturing parts with the required quality for consistent performance in their assemblies. One of the most challenging areas has been the ability to quickly identify and evaluate the quasi-static and dynamic machine errors and apply the corresponding error models to compensate. Because there are many challenges associated with some methods, including the cost in design, analysis and control of precision machine tools, the compensation method has been the most effective approach to control part quality. This paper presents the development of a Global Offset compensation method utilizing the measurements of machined part(s). The Global Offset for a machine tool is estimated through a model while utilizing the computed deviation between the measured and nominal dimensions of the part. Examples are provided to demonstrate the capabilities of this new method.