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供暖、通风和空调(HVAC)市场中电动马达的效率。创新技术领域是一种基于开关磁阻技术的新型电机和控制硬件和软件，在广泛的转速范围内表现出90%以上的非常高的效率。这项创新将通过展示如何优化这种新型电机以将噪音和振动降至最低，同时允许变速控制和互联网连接，从而增强对科学的理解。这种技术的潜在社会影响是巨大的：美国每年购买的新马达有一半以上是1-5马力的马达(1792万马力中的1024马力)，它们加起来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力。仅采用5%的可用应用程序的好处是每年节省5亿美元的电力和100万吨/年的碳排放。该小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目旨在研究一种具有高转子极点开关磁阻(HRSRM)设计的新型电机。这种HRSRM电机具有简化的物理结构，没有永久磁铁，但有复杂的电子设备，通过仔细定时产生磁场来管理电机中的扭矩和速度。这类电机已被证明是极难研究的，因为它具有高度的非线性响应特性，并且对定时、电磁和物理设置的微小变化非常敏感。本项目将研究采用动态控制算法来提高电力电子系统的速度和灵敏度来管理这些特性的方法。研究还将检查设计的物理要素，并建立一个结合有限元分析和结构建模、约束模式分析和振动模型的通用仿真模型，以减少和优化噪音、振动和苛刻措施。最后，该项目将优化与HRSRM电机相关的~600个关键参数，允许在几分钟而不是几个月的时间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.