The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design

July 2022

Presenters: Ahmed Elmekkawi & Lee Rogers

© Drive System Design 2021

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Webinar Contents

Introduction
• Who is DSD?

• Who are the presenters?

Key Takeaways:

• Determine a potential roadmap to minimizing the rare-earth magnets in electrification.

• Defining the critical enablers including advances in material technology and manufacturing techniques.

• Demonstrate the system level approach that is needed to exploit the potential.

© Drive System Design 2021 2

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Who is DSD?
A complete ‘turn-key’ capability providing responsive & flexible project teams for developing new xEV propulsion
systems and conventional drivetrain systems across multiple sectors

£15m+ 15%
Revenue R&D Investment

UK and mainland Europe

South Korea
North America
Japan 130+
130+ Independently
Employees
Permanent Employees Owned
Worldwide

• 100% focused on developing electric drive and

Australia transmission solutions to our customers

• Our collaborative, flexible and efficient working

Technical Centre Representative office approach is at the heart of all of our relationships

20% Automotive 25% Commercial 25% Defense 20% Off Highway 10% Aerospace
© Drive System Design 2021 3
 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Who are the Presenters?
Ahmed Elmekkawi
• Senior Engineer, UK Office,
• 4+ years experience in electric machines design
and analysis.
• Experience in generating detailed design from
clean sheets, coupled with thermal and mechanical
design. Alongside system level considerations and
testing.
© Drive System Design 2021
Lee Rogers
• Principal Engineer, US Office,
• 10 + years in system level engineering and
electrified powertrain design.
• System engineering focus, effective at making
trade-offs between subsystems to enable high
performance systems.
4
 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Content per Webinar

Webinar I Webinar II
•Motor Technologies •System Context
•Magnet Materials •Higher Speeds
•Other Materials •Improved Cooling

© Drive System Design 2021 5

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Rare-Earth Element Benefits

Benefits
• Rare earth magnets are superior
due to their flux density

• Higher efficiency

• Higher power density

• System-benefits

© Drive System Design 2021 6

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Rare-Earth Element Challenges
• Rare earth elements (REEs) are typically defined as 17 Lanthanides + yttrium & scandium.

© Drive System Design 2021 7

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Rare-Earth Element Challenges
• REE are typically defined as 17 Lanthanides + yttrium & scandium.
• REEs produce unsustainable externalities in their production.

2,000 Tons 1 Ton 75 m3 1 Ton

Toxic Radioactive Water REE
Waste Waste Waste
Raw
Material

© Drive System Design 2021 8

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Rare-Earth Element Challenges
• We are enabling clean technologies with dirty materials, which compromises the fundamental electrification
value proposition.

© Drive System Design 2021 9

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Rare-Earth Element Challenges
• Price and supply volatility also present challenges to getting products to customer in at the price and time
points they expect.

Neodymium USD/Ton
300,000

200,000

100,000

0
2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
© Drive System Design 2021 10
 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Motor Technologies

There are many motor technologies available to us, permanent magnet motors are a small subset of these
possibilities.

Asynchronous Synchronous

Permanent Synchronous Switched Wound

Induction
Magnet Reluctance Reluctance Rotor

Hybrid

© Drive System Design 2021 11

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Motor Technologies - Synchronous Reluctance & Hybrid

Opportunities
• Making use of both PM torque and
reluctance torque.

• Reducing cost and reliance/use of

rare earth magnets

• Hybrid designs achieved saliency

ratios between 2-3.

Synchronous Reluctance PM Assisted

Machine Synchronous Reluctance
(Hybrid)

© Drive System Design 2021 12

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Motor Technologies - Induction Machines
Opportunities

• Less mechanical constraints .Less rotor constraints "no

magnets". Opportunity to reduce mass.

• Better efficiency at high speed or longer efficiency regions

in a drive cycle.

• Mechanical differences enable higher top speeds

Challenges
• Lower peak efficiency and power factor values.

• Generally heavier for the same power.

• Rotor losses are high, implement rotor cooling.

© Drive System Design 2021 13

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Motor Technologies - Switched Reluctance
Opportunities
• Rotor includes no magnets or rotor bars. Runs by
reluctance torque.

• Minimal maintenance and manufacturing cost due to

their simple structures.

• High fault withstand and better for Ultra-speed

operation.

• Well suited to some niche applications

Challenges
• Lower torque/power density and efficiency compared to
PM and IM motors.

• High Torque ripple/cogging , NVH impact.

• Mitigation via Control techniques.

© Drive System Design 2021 14

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Motor Technologies - Common Challenges

Overall Challenges
• Lower power density

• Lower efficiency

Potential Solutions
• System level approach
• Multi-speed transmission.

• Higher speeds
• Less package space and mass

• Better cooling Webinar II – TBC

• Other technologies
© Drive System Design 2021 15
 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Magnet Materials - Common Magnet Materials

Al Ni Co Sm Co Nd Fe B Fe O

AlNiCo Samarium Cobalt Neodymium Ferrite

© Drive System Design 2021 16
 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Magnet Materials - Ferrite Considerations
We can still use PM motor topologies but with rare earth free magnets

Biggest Differences
• Significantly Lower cost than NdFeB.
• 45% strength/flux density compared to NdFeB.
• Higher operating temperatures and demagnetization withstand compared to
NdFeB

Design Considerations
• More magnet mass
• Still cheaper.
• Finding the right package for rotor.
• Retentions and stronger steel.
• Implementing rotor topologies that aren’t specifically beneficial for NdFeB.
• Spoke type rotor topology.
• Spoke + V magnets

Typical Applications
• Low end industrial application all the way to some automotive applications.
© Drive System Design 2021 17
 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Other Materials – Closing the Performance Gap

Lamination Soft Magnetic

Grade/Thickness Composites

© Drive System Design 2021 18

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Lamination Grade / Thickness

Challenges
• Eddy currents and hysteresis produce losses in the
stator back-iron
• These vary with electrical frequency

Opportunities
• Increase resistivity
• Lower pole count
• Decrease thickness

© Drive System Design 2021 19

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Soft Metallic Composites (SMCs)

Differences
• Lower hysteresis
• Higher resistivity

Design Considerations
• Lower iron losses
• Less material – lower mass and cost

Applications
• Axial flux motors (typical)
• Radial flux motor (new)

© Drive System Design 2021 20

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Conclusions & Part II

Conclusions:
• There are many potential motor technologies and magnet materials that can reduce or eliminate rare
earth content

• This doesn’t come without a price. However, performance gaps can be addressed by considering
system-level implications alternative stator materials.

• As we’ve discussed, there is no easy step or fast path to eliminating rare earth magnets and
engineering sustainable motors overnight, it is a complex path to get to the end goal of sustainability,
with many key enablers that you need to master along the way such as SMCs, alternative motor
technologies

Part II:
• And as we’ll see in Part II, we can quantify these opportunities at the system-level via simulation to
show how we might close the performance gap.

© Drive System Design 2021 21

 The Pathways To Sustainable Motor Design
Contact / Any Questions

If you want to know more about DSD and our cross-sector motor analysis and design capabilities,
please contact:

UK, Europe & Asia

Lee Sykes at : Lee.Sykes@drivesystemdesign.com

North America
Ben Chiswick at : Ben.Chiswick@drivesystemdesign.com

Also, subscribe to our newsletter on our website: www.drivesystemdesign.com

and follow us on LinkedIn…

© Drive System Design 2021 22

© Drive System Design 2021 23