This presentation recording was made at NAFEMS Americas Seminar "Engineering Analysis & Simulation in the Automotive Industry: Creating the Next Generation Vehicle Accurate Modelling for Tomorrow's Technologies".

The automotive engineering community is now confronting the largest technology transformation since its inception. This includes the electrification of powertrains for more efficient consumption and cleaner emissions, the reinvention of the battery with fast wireless charging capabilities and finally the advent of a fully autonomous vehicle. Compounding to these technology changes, the automotive companies design verification process is moving away from a major reliance on physical testing to almost a full virtual simulation product verification process. The challenges to the automotive engineers are enormous and require a significant increase in the upfront use of numerical simulation capabilities, methods and processes such they’re able to efficiently design, manufacture and deliver these very innovative technologies to the market in greater speeds than ever before.)

Resource Abstract

The use of electric motor increases in the automotive application with the electrification of vehicle. Electric motors are changing the existing vehicle architecture. Internal combustion engines (ICE) are replaced by traction motor or in-wheel motor drive systems. Electric motor reduces cost, number of parts in the vehicle, packaging size, complexity, helps reduce CO2 emission and increases overall efficiency, ability to integrate different features related to power electronics. Designing electric motor becomes a complex challenge when the overall performance of the vehicle is considered. A poor design of the electric motor assembly can cause durability, noise and vibration issues for the vehicle. The vehicle structure design should be able to sustain the magnetic torque and electromagnetic forces generated by the motor. Secondly, even though an electric vehicle could emit lower noise than a vehicle powered by an I.C. engine, there are multiple sources of noise in the vehicle. Controlling the noise emitted by the electric motor, could improve the overall noise emission characteristics of the vehicle. Structural analysis is widely used in the design process of automobiles and electromagnetic analysis is used in the design of electric motors. This presentation deals with coupling electromagnetics and structural mechanics to design electric motors and the vehicle structure it connects to. A finite element analysis is performed to design the electric motor, to optimize its magnetic torque and the noise radiated by the motors due to the electromagnetic forces acting on the stator. Method to identify the parts contributing to the maximum structural vibrations is shown in this process. Finally, an optimization using a parametrized CAD model is performed to improve the structural and electromagnetic properties of the motor. Global response search method algorithm is used in the optimization process. The advantage of using global response search method algorithm is also discussed in the presentation.