Replacing Copper With Aluminum in Hairpin Windings Motors Intended for Utility Cars

Cutuli, Gregorio; Nuzzo, Stefano; Barater, Davide; Zou, Tianjie; Nategh, Shafigh

Abstract

Along with efficiency and torque density, one of the key design objectives in today's traction electric machines is sustainability. This is expecially true in the automotive segment, where a transition to electrification is occurring. A sustainable electric machine design implies the reduction of high environmental impact materials, such as copper for the windings or rare- earth materials for the permanent magnets (PMs). To this end, this study analyses the adoption of aluminum to replace the hairpin windings of an automotive 400 V interior permanent magnet (IPM) machine, originally optimized with copper windings. First, a detailed optimization process for a copper-based motor is carried out, adopting a multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA). Consequently, the efficiency map of the resulting design is compared to its aluminum-based version, which is directly obtained by changing the winding material. To validate the simulation and optimization trends, a copper-based prototype and its identical aluminum version are built and tested, and their efficiency maps are comprehensively compared and discussed.

Citation

Cutuli, G., Nuzzo, S., Barater, D., Zou, T., & Nategh, S. (2025). Replacing Copper With Aluminum in Hairpin Windings Motors Intended for Utility Cars. IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1109/jestie.2025.3546030

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 28, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Feb 26, 2025
• Publication Date: Feb 26, 2025
• Deposit Date: Mar 12, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 21, 2025
• Journal: IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics
• Print ISSN: 2687-9735
• Electronic ISSN: 2687-9743
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 1-12
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/jestie.2025.3546030
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/45863786