Design of Permanent Magnet Brushless DC Motor for Electric Vehicle Traction Application

This paper introduces the feasibility of the implementation of high-efficiency motors in electric vehicles (EVs) and their design. Four major areas focused on in the proposed work include the selection of motors for EV propulsion, vehicle dynamics analysis, design of the motor of desired power rating, and simulation of the motor using software tools. This paper covers the motors used for EV applications and compares them based on several criteria to choose the best among them for the desired application. The motors compared are induction motors (IM), Brushed DC motors (BDCM), and Permanent magnet brushless DC motors (PMBLDCM), among which PMBLDC motors are chosen. PMBLDC motors are high-efficiency and high-power density electrical machines with a wide range of applications. Electric vehicle drives using PMBLDC motors are one of the major areas of application for PMBLDC Motors. The vehicle understudy is chosen to be a three-wheeler, which is a widely popular, very low-cost, and common mode of transportation. The forces acting on the vehicle are assessed and the average power needed to drive the vehicle is calculated. The internal structure of the motor is studied and the motor is designed using standard formulae and the dimensions of the motor are obtained. The design parameters obtained are then inputted into motor design software. The software used here is ANSYS’s Maxwell design package. The motor parameters and the design dimensions are input into a package like ANSYS RMxprt, which gives an analytical output and then exported to Maxwell 2D (FEM-based) and simulated again to obtain various output curves.