Electric vehicles make use of permanent-magnet (PM) synchronous traction motors for their high torque density and efficiency. A comparison between interior PM and surface-mounted PM (SPM) motors is carried out, in terms of performance at given inverter ratings. The results of the analysis, based on a simplified analytical model and confirmed by finite element (FE) analysis, show that the two motors have similar rated power but that the SPM motor has barely no overload capability, independently of the available inverter current. Moreover, the loss behavior of the two motors is rather different in the various operating ranges with the SPM one better at low speed due to short end connections but penalized at high speed by the need of a significant deexcitation current. The analysis is validated through FE simulation of two actual motor designs.

Three different motor drives for electric traction are compared, in terms of output power and efficiency at the same stack dimensions and inverter size. Induction motor (IM), surface-mounted permanent-magnet (PM) (SPM), and interior PM (IPM) synchronous motor drives are investigated, with reference to a common vehicle specification. The IM is penalized by the cage loss, but it is less expensive and inherently safe in case of inverter unwilled turnoff due to natural de-excitation. The SPM motor has a simple construction and shorter end connections, but it is penalized by eddy-current loss at high speed, has a very limited transient overload power, and has a high uncontrolled generator voltage. The IPM motor shows the better performance compromise, but it might be more complicated to be manufactured. Analytical relationships are first introduced and then validated on three example designs and finite element calculated, accounting for core saturation, harmonic losses, the effects of skewing, and operating temperature. The merits and limitations of the three solutions are quantified comprehensively and summarized by the calculation of the energy consumption over the standard New European Driving Cycle.

This paper proposes and formalizes a comprehensive experimental approach for the identification of the magnetic model of synchronous electrical machines of all kinds. The identification procedure is based on controlling the current of the machine under test while this is driven at constant speed by another regenerative electric drive. Compensation of stator resistance and inverter voltage drops, iron loss, and operating temperature issues are all taken into account. A road map for implementation is given, on different types of hardware setups. Experimental results are presented, referring to two test motors of small size, and references of larger motors identified with the same technique are given from the literature.

This paper presents an integral battery charger for an electric scooter with high voltage batteries and interior-permanent-magnet motor traction drive. The battery charger is derived from the power hardware of the scooter, with the ac motor drive that operates as three-phase boost rectifier with power factor correction capability. The control of the charger is also integrated into the scooter control firmware that is implemented on a fixed-point DSP controller. Current-controlled or voltage-controlled charge modes are actuated according to the requirements of the battery management system, that is embedded into the battery pack. With respect to previous integrated chargers, the ac current is absorbed at unitary power factor with no harmonic distortion. Moreover, no additional filtering is needed since the pulsewidth modulation ripple is minimized by means of phase interleaving. The feasibility of the integral charger with different ac motors (induction motor, surface-mounted phase modulation motor) is also discussed, by means of a general model purposely developed for three-phase ac machines. The effectiveness of the proposed battery charger is experimentally demonstrated on a prototype electric scooter, equipped with two Li-ion battery packs rated 260 V, 20 Ah.

In high-performance control of ac machines through variable frequency drives, the knowledge of machine parameters plays a decisive role. The accuracy with which machine parameters can be known is directly related to the time and effort put in testing and commissioning process. In the ever-demanding industrial environments, the time spent on parameter identification translates into loss of production. To reduce commissioning times, research in this direction has focused on automatizing the identification procedure without loss of accuracy. This paper reviews different lines of research adopted over the past few decades for machine parameter identification. Parameter estimation of ac machines is considered because of their widespread applications from servomechanisms to traction to aviation. The surveyed works include self-commissioning schemes that have become an integral part and salient feature of modern electric drives. This feature enables the drives to automatically identify machine parameters and tune the control loops.

The automated design of synchronous reluctance (SyR) motors based on multiobjective genetic optimization and finite-element analysis is considered in this paper. Three types of barrier shapes are considered, all described by an effective limited set of input variables. The three solutions are investigated to establish which of the geometries can give the best torque output and also which one represents the best compromise between output performance and computational time. The analysis presented in this paper shows that SyR motors designed automatically can give a good performance and can be designed in a reasonable time, and it is also shown that not all design degrees of freedom are useful in terms of motor performance. Two prototypes of automatically designed machines have been fabricated and experimentally compared with a third prototype designed according to state-of-the-art design principles.