Reduce partial discharge for electric motors with a long service life
Additive Drives and Daikin Chemicals presented the first results of their Joint Development Agreement at EDPC 2024: Increasing the copper fill factor in electric motors while reducing partial discharge in electric motors for traction drives.
One of the challenges in the development of durable electric motors, particularly for use in electric aircraft and drones, is partial discharge. The effects of partial discharges between the individual conductors damage the insulation, which significantly shortens the service life of the electric motor.
Additive Drives takes the phenomenon of partial discharge into account when developing new electric motors. The partial discharge inception voltage (PDIV) can be increased by adapting the wiring. For this purpose, the winding design is optimized and validated for partial discharge using our in-house simulation tools.
In addition, PFA-insulated magnet wire is used to achieve the best possible results. In side-by-side functional tests, a consistently higher PDIV level was found compared to the conventional insulating materials.
More than 10% increase in performance in the same installation space
As a result, the insulation thickness could be reduced by 50% compared to PAI enameled wire, which leads to a significantly higher copper fill factor in the slot and an increase in the continuous output of the motor by more than 10%. At the same time, the efficiency of the motor is significantly improved.
This technology can be used in a variety of ways and opens up new areas in the field of high-performance electric motors:
- 800+V for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and heavy trucks
- Durable rail and traction drives
- Powerful aircraft engines
- Electric motors for aerospace applications
CEO and co-founder Axel Helm: “Additive Drives aims to make electrification easier, more sustainable and better! The joint development of electric motors with high-performance materials is a major step towards taking electric drives to a new level worldwide!”
The in-house production of wires enables particularly fast prototyping and rapid validation of the concepts. Processing on standard systems guarantees that the process is suitable for large-scale production.
