A team at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney in Australia has built a new high-speed motor which can be used in EVs, large HVAC systems, high-precision CNC machines and the integrated drive generators in aircraft engines.

Using its own optimization program, the team has built a prototype IPMSM motor with a patented rotor topology and sleeveless rotors.

“With this research project we have tried to achieve the absolute maximum speed, and we have recorded over 100,000 revolutions per minute. The peak power density is around 7 kW per kilogram,” says team member Dr. Guoyu Chu.

According to the UNSW Sydney Newsroom, “The maximum power and speed achieved by this novel motor have successfully exceeded and doubled the existing high-speed record of laminated Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors, making it the world’s fastest IPMSM ever built with commercialized lamination materials.”

“The program evaluates 90 potential designs, then selects the best 50 percent of options to generate a new range of designs and so on, until the optimum is achieved. The final motor is the 120th generation analyzed by the program,” says UNSW Sydney.

According to Dr. Chu, “Our rotors have very good mechanical robustness, so we don’t need that sleeve [on the rotors], which reduces the manufacturing cost. And we only use around 30 percent of rare earth materials, which includes a big reduction in the material cost—thus making our high-performance motors more environmentally friendly and affordable.”

“If an electric vehicle manufacturer like Tesla wanted to use this motor, then I believe it would only take around 6 to 12 months to modify it based on their specifications,” says Dr. Chu.

Source: UNSW Sydney Newsroom
Image by Dr Guoyo Chu