Design of High Power Density and High Efficiency Wound-Field Synchronous Motor for Electric Vehicle Traction

This paper deals with a design method to improve the power density and energy efficiency of a wound-field synchronous motor (WFSM) using hairpin type rectangular wire for electric vehicle traction. First, the prototype is analyzed via experiments to come up with plans to improve it. In addition, mechanical loss of the prototype including the bearing and brush friction losses is obtained and used for designing the improved motor. After then, an analytical approach is presented for the magnetic circuit design to minimize magnetic resistance in the motor core. Also, the analytical methods are proposed to predict the resistance of the field and armature windings. At this step, rectangular wire is considered for the armature winding to reduce the copper loss. Moreover, the calculation process is presented to estimate the iron loss considering harmonics. The performances such as power density and efficiency of the improved WFSM are analyzed and compared with those of the prototype. In addition, the energy efficiency of the motors in the new European drive cycle (NEDC) is analyzed. Finally, the performances of the improved WFSM are compared with the experimental results to verify the validity of the proposed design process.