Feasibility Design Study of High-Performance, High-Power-Density Propulsion Motor for Middle-Range Electric Aircraft

Hebala, Ahmed; Nuzzo, Stefano; Volpe, Giuseppe; Connor, Peter H.; Giangrande, Paolo; Gerada, Chris; Galea, Michael

Abstract

This paper deals with the design of a high power-density, high efficiency and low torque ripple propulsion motor for electric aircraft. The proposed design procedure resulted in a high-performance propulsion motor intended for a direct-drive solution on an 8-12 passenger commercial aircraft with a range up to 1000 miles. The electromagnetic design is firstly addressed and then the thermal management is discussed. A set of design development steps are investigated and validated through finite-element software, involving studies for the optimal selection of the of air gap diameter and the slot/pole combination, followed by improving the efficiency by suitable material selection and methods for losses mitigation. Finally, in order to prove the enhancement of power density and efficiency through this feasibility design study, the designed propulsion motor performance is compared to the state-of-the-art motors of similar direct-drive aircraft propulsion systems.

Citation

Hebala, A., Nuzzo, S., Volpe, G., Connor, P. H., Giangrande, P., Gerada, C., & Galea, M. (2020). Feasibility Design Study of High-Performance, High-Power-Density Propulsion Motor for Middle-Range Electric Aircraft. In 2020 IEEE 29th International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE) (300-306). https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIE45063.2020.9152551

• Conference Name: 2020 IEEE 29th International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE)
• Conference Location: Delft, Netherlands
• Start Date: Jun 17, 2020
• End Date: Jun 19, 2020
• Acceptance Date: Apr 15, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jul 30, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Deposit Date: Nov 2, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 4, 2020
• Pages: 300-306
• Series ISSN: 2163-5145
• Book Title: 2020 IEEE 29th International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE)
• ISBN: 978-1-7281-5636-1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ISIE45063.2020.9152551
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5013360
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9152551
• Additional Information: © 2020 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.