I-Corps: Bearingless Electric Motors for Industrial Compressor Systems

I-Corps：用于工业压缩机系统的无轴承电动机

• 批准号: 2304193
• 负责人: Eric Severson
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-01-15 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2304193&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Bearingless; Electric; Motors; Industrial

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of new technology that produces completely integrated electric machines. These machines will leverage geometry not readily manufactured with conventional machining to support 3-dimensional flux paths and actuate across all six degrees of freedom. This project's bearingless technology can unlock customer gains through enhanced system sensing capability to enable predictive maintenance and decreased noise, vibration, and harshness. The value proposition of bearingless technology is particularly strong for turbomachinery applications in wastewater aeration, waste heat recovery, automotive turbocharges, and thermal grid storage. By eliminating bearings, the proposed technology can increase the mean time between failure of motor systems. Through increased system reliability and lifetime, this technology can accelerate deployment of highly efficient, sustainable, and intelligent infrastructure solutions for the benefit of society.This I-Corps project is based on the development of new bearingless electric motor generator technology that provides the benefits of magnetic levitation while solving the challenges associated with magnetic bearings. The mechanical bearings used to support the shaft of today's electric motors and generators are a source of major pain for integrators, owners, and operators of electric machines. These pain points primarily come in the form of low system reliability and high total cost of ownership. While magnetic bearing manufacturers have attempted to solve these pain points by magnetically levitating the shaft (thereby eliminating mechanical bearings from motor/generators), this solution has seen limited market acceptance due to increased capital cost, lengthy timelines for new product commissioning, and integration challenges. This project's bearingless motor technology integrates the functionality of a magnetic bearing into the existing hardware of an electric motor/generator. While conventional electric motor/generators use stator winding current to control electromagnetic torque on their rotor, this bearingless motor/generators additionally use stator current to control electromagnetic forces on the rotor that make the motor act as if it were also a magnetic bearing. This technology is employed by unlocking the large radial electromagnetic pressure that is present in today's electric motor/generators but is canceled by deliberate design symmetry.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该 I-Corps 项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发生产完全集成电机的新技术。 这些机器将利用传统加工不易制造的几何形状来支持 3 维通量路径并在所有六个自由度上进行驱动。该项目的无轴承技术可以通过增强的系统传感能力来实现预测性维护并降低噪音、振动和声振粗糙度，从而为客户带来收益。无轴承技术的价值主张对于废水曝气、废热回收、汽车涡轮增压和热网存储等涡轮机械应用来说尤其强大。通过消除轴承，所提出的技术可以增加电机系统的平均无故障时间。通过提高系统可靠性和使用寿命，该技术可以加速高效、可持续和智能基础设施解决方案的部署，造福社会。该 I-Corps 项目基于新型无轴承电动发电机技术的开发，该技术具有以下优势：磁悬浮，同时解决与磁力轴承相关的挑战。用于支撑当今电动机和发电机轴的机械轴承是电机集成商、所有者和操作员的主要痛苦来源。这些痛点主要表现为系统可靠性低和总拥有成本高。虽然磁力轴承制造商试图通过磁悬浮轴（从而消除电机/发电机中的机械轴承）来解决这些痛点，但由于资本成本增加、新产品调试时间漫长以及集成挑战，该解决方案的市场接受度有限。该项目的无轴承电机技术将磁力轴承的功能集成到电动机/发电机的现有硬件中。传统的电动机/发电机使用定子绕组电流来控制转子上的电磁扭矩，而这种无轴承电动机/发电机还使用定子电流来控制转子上的电磁力，使电动机就像磁力轴承一样工作。该技术通过解锁当今电动机/发电机中存在的大径向电磁压力而被采用，但通过故意设计对称性而被取消。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的评估进行评估，被认为值得支持。影响审查标准。