SBIR Phase II: Designing High Efficiency Small Scale Motors using Switched Reluctance Technology

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是彻底改变加热，通风和空调（HVAC）市场中电动机的效率。创新技术领域是基于开关磁阻技术的新型电机和控制硬件和软件，在广泛的速度范围内表现出90%以上的极高效率。这项创新将通过展示如何优化这种新型电动机以最大限度地减少噪音和振动，同时允许变速控制和互联网连接来增强科学理解。这种技术的潜在社会影响是显著的：美国每年购买的新电机中有一半以上是1-5马力电机（179.2M中的102.4M），它们总共占美国电力消耗的近25%。因此，如果将这项技术商业化，由于效率的提高，零售和商业组织每年可以节省数百万美元的电费。仅5%的可用应用的采用率带来的好处是每年节省5亿美元的电力和100万吨/年的碳排放。这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第2阶段项目旨在研究一种具有高转子极开关磁阻（HRSRM）设计的新型电机。这种HRSRM电机具有简化的物理结构，没有永磁体，但复杂的电子设备通过精心定时产生磁场来管理电机的扭矩和速度。这类电机已经证明非常难以研究，因为高度非线性的响应特性，以及对定时，电磁学和物理设置中非常小的变化的敏感性。本项目将研究采用动态控制算法的方法，以提高电力电子设备的速度和灵敏度，从而管理这些特性。研究还将检查设计的物理元素，并建立一个通用的仿真模型，结合有限元分析以及结构建模，约束模式分析和振动模型，以减少和优化噪音，振动和粗糙度措施。最后，该项目将优化与HRSRM电机相关的约600个关键参数，允许在几分钟内而不是几个月内快速设计和制作新电机设计的原型。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to revolutionize the efficiency of electric motors in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) market. The innovation technology area is a new class of electric motor and control hardware and software that is based on switched reluctance technology, exhibiting very high efficiencies of 90%+ across a broad range of speeds. This innovation will enhance scientific understanding by showing how this new class of electric motors can be optimized to minimize noise and vibration, while allowing variable speed control and Internet connectivity. The potential societal impacts of such a technology are significant: more than half the new motors purchased each year in the United States are 1-5 horsepower motors (1.024M of 1.792M), and they collectively account for nearly 25% of the United States electricity consumption. As such, if commercialized this technology could save retail and commercial organizations millions of dollars a year in electricity savings due to efficiency improvements. The benefits for an adoption rate of just 5% of available applications are $500M / year in electricity savings and 1M tons / year of carbon savings.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 project aims to research a new type of electric motor with a high rotor pole switched reluctance (HRSRM) design. This HRSRM motor has a simplified physical construction with no permanent magnets but complex electronics that manage the torque and speed in the motor through carefully timed generation of magnetic fields. This class of motors have proven extremely difficult to research because of highly nonlinear response characteristics, and sensitivity to very small changes in timing, electromagnetics, and physical setup. This project will research methods for adapting dynamic control algorithms to increase the speed and sensitivity of the power electronics to manage these characteristics. Research will also examine physical elements of the design and build a generalized simulation model combining both finite element analysis as well as structural modeling, constrained mode analysis and vibration models to reduce and optimize noise, vibration and harshness measures. Finally this project will optimize the ~600 key parameters associated with an HRSRM motor, allowing the rapid design and prototyping of new motor designs in minutes rather than months.