Assessment of Ultra-High-Speed motors potential for electric propulsion

电力推进推动了功率密度更高的电动机的发展。然而，直接与切向速度耦合的直接驱动电机的功率密度受到螺旋桨后面可用面积的限制。一种从根本上提高功率密度的方法是使用带有齿轮箱的超高速电机来解耦旋转速度并实现高切向速度。这里提出的项目旨在评估齿轮超高速电动机用于电力推进的好处。第一步是对永久转子样品进行迭代破坏性试验，以了解和超越当前的切向速度限制。第二步是将结果整合到多学科分析和优化工具中，以找到更好地利用切向速度增益的配置，以最大限度地提高功率密度和效率。最后一步是构建和测试超高速电机，以演示超高切向速度运行并验证这些频率下的损耗预测。该项目是开发新技术以克服当前功率密度限制的第一步，这将使该项目的加拿大合作伙伴在新兴的电动VTOL市场中比竞争对手更具竞争优势。

Electric propulsion has driven the development of more power-dense electric motor. However, the power density of direct-drive motor, directly coupled with tangential velocity, is limited by the area available behind the propeller. An approach to radically increasing power density is to use ultra-high-speed motors with a gearbox to decouple rotational speeds and achieve high tangential speeds. The project proposed here aims at evaluating the benefits of geared ultra-high-speed motors for electric propulsion. The first step is to carry iterative destructive testing of permanent rotor samples to understand and surpass the current tangential speed limits. The second step is to integrate the results in a multidisciplinary analysis and optimization tool to find the configuration that better exploit this gain in tangential speed to maximize power density and efficiency. The last step is to build and test an ultra-high-speed motor to demonstrate ultra-high tangential speed operation and validate the losses prediction at these frequencies. This project is the first step towards developing new technologies to overcome current power density limits that would give this project Canadian partners a competitive advantage over competitors in the emerging electric-VTOL market.