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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 40, NO. 4, JULY 2004

Design of a Compact Winding for an Axial-Flux Permanent-Magnet Brushless DC Motor Used in an Electric Two-Wheeler
P. R. Upadhyay, K. R. Rajagopal, Senior Member, IEEE, and B. P. Singh, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper describes the design of a compact winding for an axial-flux permanent-magnet brushless dc motor used in an electric two-wheeler. Once the motor design is carried out using the conventional method and the dimensions of the motor, magnet, etc. are determined, the electric loading and the magnetomotive force (MMF) required to obtain the peak torque can be calculated. From the knowledge of the MMF requirement, a compact and efficient winding configuration has been achieved using a parametric study. The factors considered for the winding design are: 1) operating voltage; 2) number of poles; 3) cross-sectional area available for the winding; 4) conductor size; 5) number of parallel paths; 6) length of mean turn; 7) and the peak torque for a given value of AT/pole/phase. The motor voltage is decided based on the speed of the motor and aspects of the battery and the controller. The selected winding configuration for an 80-Nm peak torque, 48-V, three-phase motor is having 48 coils with each coil of 18 turns made out of 15 standard wire gauge copper wire. The resistance per phase is calculated as 0.0203 .

Fig. 1. One-sixteenth magnetic circuit of axial-field PM BLDC motor. (1) and (5) Rotor cores. (2) and (4) Permanent magnets. (3) Stator core.

Index TermsAxial-flux motor, dc motor, electric motor, electric two-wheeler, motor, permanent-magnet (PM) motor, winding.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE ELECTRIC two-wheeler is a viable solution for urban mobility due to its efficient and pollution-free operation. The permanent-magnet (PM) motor is best suited as the drive motor of the electric vehicle (EV) due to its high efficiency, high torque output, high power density , and maintenance-free operation. Especially for electric two-wheelers, the axial-field PM brushless (BLDC) motor is a good choice. The axial field motor has a high torque-to-weight ratio, and its aspect ratio fits more comfortably in the wheel, as the motor can be used as a direct drive motor. In this paper, a slotless axial-field PM BLDC motor having the stator coil sandwiched between PM rotor discs has been designed for driving a two-wheeler having a laden weight of 250 kg and maximum speed of 60 km/h. The vehicle has to be accelerated from 0 to 45 km/h in 9 s. The performance requirements for the motor have been calculated as follows: Maximum speed: 800 r/min; Maximum torque: 80 Nm;
Manuscript received October 15, 2003. P. R. Upadhyay is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Nirma Institute of Technology, Ahmedabad 382481, India (e-mail: pru_nirma@yahoo.com). K. R. Rajagopal and B. P. Singh are with the Electrical Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi 110016, India (e-mail: kr_rajagopal@ieee.org; bpsingh@ee.iitd.ernet.in). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2004.829820

Rated torque (RMS over a range): 48 Nm; Maximum power: 6 hp; Continuous power: 3 hp. The motor has 16 poles, and hence 1/16th part need only be analyzed to calculate the performance of the motor. A 1/16th part of geometry involving half sections each of one N-pole and one S-pole is shown in Fig. 1, which is used for analyzing the magnetic circuit. is the airgap flux per pole. By following the method Here, given by Upadhyay et al. [1] and solving the above magnetic circuit, the motor torque expression can be worked out as T where average flux density in the airgap; current density; conductor packing factor; width of the coil; height of the coil window; number of magnet poles; number of slots per pole per phase; number of turns per slot; outer radius of the coil; inner radius of the coil. Extensive parametric analyses have been carried out with various combinations of magnet length and the axial depth of the coil with a fixed axial length between the stator core and the rotor core. It is observed that the torque is a function of both magnet length and the coil depth. The torque initially increases with the increase in the magnet length because of increase in flux density but beyond certain value torque decreases due to reduction in electric loading. This enables to select optimum magnet length and coil depth for the desired torque. The analytical results are verified using the finite-element (FE) method (1)

0018-9464/04$20.00 2004 IEEE

UPADHYAY et al.: DESIGN OF A COMPACT WINDING

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and it is observed that the magnet length of 13 mm and axial coil depth of 12 mm is optimum for developing the torque of 48.32 Nm and the airgap flux density is 0.282 T [1]. The total AT per coil is determined as 540 and 937 for the rated torque and the peak torque, respectively, which is scalar product of Turns per slot and the peak current in the coil. II. VOLTAGE RATING The selection of voltage rating depends mainly on three basic aspects; motor aspect, controller aspect, and the battery aspect. A. Motor Aspect For a given torque, the required value of the ampere-turn (AT) can be determined. For a given value of AT, with increase in battery voltage the current decreases while, the number of turn increases to maintain AT requirement. Hence, the length of the conductor increases. The cross-sectional area of the conductor also decreases with current reduction. This implies that the total armature copper loss I R is not affected by battery voltage. The induced electromotive force (EMF) is directly proportional to the operating speed [2][5]; hence, the battery voltage also should increase with the operating speed. B. Motor Controller Aspect For the same power rating of the controller, the controller loss will be smaller for increased battery voltage. The switching devices are available in voltage ranges, and for a particular current rating of the device the cost is not affected much within the voltage range. These ranges are generally referred as, up to 100 V, up to 600 V, etc. Considering the 50% derating of the device, 48 V for the drive circuit and hence, for the battery is suitable for economical operation of the vehicle. C. Battery Aspect The battery voltage is also one of the factors affecting the efficiency of the battery. The efficiency of the battery pack is higher for higher voltages. For example, a 48-V battery is 27% more efficient, requiring fewer amperes to move the EV than a 36-V battery. Thus increasing the distance travel for the same expenditure of the energy and resulting in lower cost to recharge. Considering above three aspects, it is decided to take motor rated voltage to be 48 V for 800 r/min motor. III. WINDING DESIGN As 48 V is applied to an axial-field PM BLDC motor, any two phases are conducting simultaneously. So as to limit the back-emf to affordable limit, it is decided to have four parallel paths per phase. There are four coils per parallel path and 16 coils per phase in three phase star connected configuration of the stator winding. The induced EMF per slot can be written as E (2)
Fig. 4. Resistance variation with number of turns. Fig. 2. Sectional and side view of coil.

Fig. 3. Induced EMF variation with number of turns.

Mean length of turn mm Ns Length of conductor per coil Area of conductor window Kc mm . to be 0.75 and resistivity of copper to be Considering m, the resistance per coil is given as (3) R and the resistance per parallel path R The desired peak current can be determined from the AT per slot corresponding to the rated peak torque, which is 937 at the rated peak torque (desired) (4)

where is the angular speed of the motor. From the geometrical data given in Fig. 2, the resistance of the coil and the induced EMF per coil are determined as follows:

It can be seen that the resistance, back EMF, and desired peak current are functions of number of turns. From these relationships, the number of turns per slot can be determine to satisfy all the three parameters. A program is prepared to plot the change in all three parameters with the change in number of turns. The graphical results are shown in Figs. 35.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 40, NO. 4, JULY 2004

Fig. 5. Current variation with number of turns.

Fig. 7. Coil connections and conductor arrangements.

0.0203 . The volume per coil is 8142 mm , and for 48 coils, the total copper volume and weight are worked out to be 391 cm and 3.47 kg, respectively. The copper losses in this compact winding for continuous rated power of 3 hp is 100 W, which gives efficiency in order of 95%. IV. CONCLUSION For the given total axial length of motor, there is an optimum magnet length at which the torque is the maximum. Resistance of the coil, induced EMF per coil, and the current are functions of number of turns for the fixed value of AT. The desired peak current and the actual coil current are plotted , and the intersection of both of these results the best solution for the number of turns and the peak current of the motor. The optimum value of number of turns for given AT results in significant reduction in the copper required; hence, this work is helpful to the designer for the design of compact winding of an axial-field PM BLDC motor. REFERENCES
[1] P. R. Upadhyay, K. R. Rajagopal, and B. P. Singh, Computer aided design of an axial-field PM brushless DC motor for an electric vehicle, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 93, no. 10, pp. 86898691, May 2003. [2] D. C. Hanselman, Brushless Permanent Magnet Design. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994, ch. 6, pp. 137153. [3] D. Patterson and R. Spee, The design and development of axial flux permanent magnet brushless DC motor for wheel drive in a solar powered vehicle, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 31, pp. 10541061, Sept/Oct. 1995. [4] W. S. Leung and J. Chan, A new design approach for axial field electrical machine, IEEE Trans. Power App. Syst., vol. PAS-99, pp. 16791685, JulyAug. 1980. [5] F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, O. Honorati, A. Di Napoli, and E. Santini, Compact wheel direct drive for EVs, IEEE Ind. Appl. Mag., pp. 2532, Nov./Dec. 1996.

Fig. 6.

Actual and desired current changes.

For more turns, resistance increases, and the current decreases. Therefore, to get the desired value of torque, more battery voltage is required. On the other hand, for fewer turns, operation will not be satisfactory at the rated voltage. The actual current I is calculated based on the induced EMF and resistance I V R E (5)

To arrive at an optimum number of turns, the desired current and the actual current are plotted for different values of number of turns as given in Fig. 6. The number of turns is selected to be 18 based on Fig. 6. The cross-sectional area available for 18 conductors of the coil is 54 mm , and therefore, the area calculated for each conductor will be 3 mm . The nearest available size of the conductor is 15 standard wire gauge. After allowing for the insulation thickness of 0.035 mm. The effective diameter worked out to 1.9 mm. The proposed connection diagram of stator coil and the conductor arrangement are shown in Fig. 7. In the above arrangement, the resistance calculated per parallel path is 0.0812 , and the resistance per phase will be