<p>Electric generators provide the vast majority of power to the electric grid and include steam, hydroelectric, and&nbsp;wind turbines. Additive manufacturing offers the ability to cater design towards functionality and enabes complex structures not possible in conventional manufacturing. We combined design for additive manufacturing with electric machine design in order to create a lightweight permament magnetic direct drive generator variant catered for wind energy. Direct drive permanent magnet generators offer improved reliability by removing the gearbox as well as greater efficiencies than their geared counterparts. However,&nbsp;to produce an equivalent amount of torque as a high speed machine, the diameter of these machines become large resulting in high mass (ex: 250 tons for a 10 MW machine).&nbsp;Additive manufacutirng allows the manufacutring of complex lattice structures which were used to lightweight the generator. We employed a coupled approach combining a 1D electromagnetic-thermal model to implicit modeling and optimization of lattice structures to determine the lightweight variant. Both a 5 MW and 10 MW design were chosen for three different lattice types: Schwartz primitive, Neovirus, and Split P. Combined rotor and stator mass reductions were upwards of 20%. The thermal model ensured natural convection or forced air cooling was capable of removing heat produced from copper losses, hysteresis, and eddy currents while maintaining the gerenator operating temperature. Optimized machine parameters are provided for both power levels and all lattice geometries. This research provides a 1D approach to combining electromagnetic and thermal generator design while coupling to implicit modeling for lattice optimization.</p>

Coupled Electromagnetic and Lattice Structure Optimization for the Rotor and Stator of Large Electric Machines

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/POWER/POWER2021/volume/85109

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