Effect of Coupling Stiffness on New High-Speed Electric Machine Driveline

This research studies the viability of producing a modular megawatt-class high-speed electrical machine drive that can be used in various applications, such as compressors and turbines. Currently, most high-speed drives use a standard-speed electric machine with a step-up gearbox to power a stand-alone high-speed compressor or turbine. Although direct high-speed machines are optimal for such applications, they are often not used due to their time-consuming development process and high machine cost. The long development time is due to multidisciplinary design, where even small changes in upscaling the design can cause the whole machine to be redesigned. A new high-speed drive configuration is presented to make electric machines less sensitive to system changes or application specifications. In this approach, the impeller from the application side is mounted on an additional shaft and connected to the electric motor via a flexible element. Therefore, necessary modifications can be implemented on the impeller side while the flexible element can be designed to keep the dynamics of the rotor within operational range.