CAREER: Guided Exploration of Multiphysics Design Space for Electric Machines Using Tensorial Analysis (GEOMETRY)

2023年是自1940年以来地球上最热的一年，凸显了应对气候变化和过度碳排放的紧迫性。在这项任务中，电动机和发电机，或统称为电机（em），发挥着关键作用。全球90%以上的电力是通过新兴市场产生的，其中45%转化为机械功。新兴市场是电动汽车（ev）、风能发电和各种工业过程的核心，推动了这些基本应用的发展。为了突破EM性能的界限，探索多物理场设计空间至关重要，其中包括各种物理学科的相互作用，如电动力学、传热和结构力学。多物理场设计空间受限于EM拓扑结构，即EM中组成部件的排列，包括钢，铜，磁铁等。一个自然的问题是：这些组成部分的最佳安排是什么？提出的研究准备系统地回答这个基本问题，并加速探索高性能和高度可持续的新兴市场。与研究平行，PI的教育目标是系统地培养多样化的多物理场设计师，包括那些代表性不足的设计师。PI的教育活动将包括构建一个名为TENSOR的基于网站的学习平台，以创建一个包容性的多物理场学习中心，为K-12、本科生和研究生实施基于二元和类比的多物理场教育技术，并为前沿EM劳动力提供开放访问的新EM设计课程。在现有的设计范式中，新的EM拓扑往往是由设计师构思出来的，这种构思依赖于设计师的直觉，导致新的设计空间和相应的性能空间零星地显露出来。为了克服这种基于直觉的设计范式的局限性，这个CAREER项目的首要目标是开创一种新的设计范式——多物理场综合，利用张量分析实现对多物理场设计空间的指导探索。为了实现这一目标，计划进行三个重点研究。首先，由电动力学控制并在超维空间中表达的原始em将被用作派生新拓扑的起点。其次，将EMs的超维模型体现在三维空间中，进行性能评价和优化。第三，在前两个推力的方法将被推广，以纳入物理超越电动力学和实现多物理场综合。在所有三个推力，张量分析起源于数学（几何）和理论物理（相对论）将被应用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The year 2023 has witnessed the hottest days on Earth since 1940, highlighting the urgency of the fight against climate change and excessive carbon emissions. In this mission, motors and generators, or collectively electric machines (EMs), play a pivotal role. Through EMs, over 90% of global electricity is generated, 45% of which is turned into mechanical work. EMs are at the heart of electric vehicles (EVs), wind energy generation, and various industrial processes, propelling these essential applications forward. To push EM performance boundaries, it is crucial to explore the multiphysics design space, which encompasses the interplay of various physical disciplines, such as electrodynamics, heat transfer, and structural mechanics. The multiphysics design space is confined by EM topologies, i.e., arrangements of constituent parts in EMs including steel, copper, magnets, etc. A natural question to ask is: what are the best arrangements of these constituent parts? The proposed research is poised to systematically answer this fundamental question and accelerate the exploration of high-performance and highly sustainable EMs. Parallel to the research, the PI’s education goal is to systematically foster diverse multiphysics designers, including those who are underrepresented. The PI’s education activities will include constructing a website-based learning platform named TENSOR to create an inclusive multiphysics learning hub, implementing a duality and analogy-based multiphysics education technique for K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students, and offering an open-access new EM design course to the frontier EM workforce.In the existing design paradigm, new EM topologies are often conceived by designers and the conception relies on their intuition, resulting in sporadically revealing new design space and corresponding performance space. To overcome the limitations of this intuition-based design paradigm, the overarching goal of this CAREER project is to pioneer a new design paradigm — multiphysics synthesis which realizes guided exploration of multiphysics design space for EMs using tensorial analysis. To achieve this goal, three research thrusts are planned. First, primitive EMs, governed by electrodynamics and expressed in hyperdimensional space, will be used as starting points to derive new topologies. Second, the hyperdimensional models of EMs will be embodied in the 3D space for performance evaluation and optimization. Third, the methodologies in the first two thrusts will be generalized to incorporate physics beyond electrodynamics and fulfill multiphysics synthesis. In all three thrusts, tensorial analysis originated from mathematics (geometry) and theoretical physics (relativity theory) will be applied.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.