PFI-RP: High-Reliability, Low-Cost, Rare-Earth-Free Electric Motor for Electrified Transportation Applications

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project is to develop a commercially-viable, rare-earth material-free electric vehicle motor with new design and analysis tools. This project, if successful will transform current design practices, seamlessly integrating low-cost, high-performance, rare-earth-free magnet materials into the wide spectrum of clean energy systems. The developed solution could result in highly efficient, reliable, compact, and low-cost motors and generators in the domestic and international electrified transportation industry. This will accelerate faster and easier migrations toward clean energy generation and consumption while avoiding global supply chain disruption of critical minerals and limiting fossil energy usage and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The proposed project is cross-disciplinary, spanning advanced magnet materials and thermal analysis in mechanical engineering to solving electromagnetic field, torque, power generation, and efficiency problems in electrical engineering. The design of new high-reliability and low-cost electric motor for target market segmentation in the electrified transportation industry is novel and transformative. The unique design procedure with a 3-dimensional thermal analysis and optimizer can generate several hundred design candidates with a new non-rare earth magnet material as an alternative to the rare-earth magnets. This will result in algorithms and tools that can benefit engineers and scientists directly. By understanding the fundamental mechanism of demagnetization risk of non-rare earth magnets and their thermal properties, the proposed research will impact highly reliable next-generation motor and clean energy systems and derive energy-efficient, low-cost design and control strategies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.