Traction motor | EPFL Graph Search

A traction motor is an electric motor used for propulsion of a vehicle, such as locomotives, electric or hydrogen vehicles, or electric multiple unit trains. Traction motors are used in electrically powered railway vehicles (electric multiple units) and other electric vehicles including electric milk floats, trolleybuses, elevators, roller coasters, and conveyors, as well as vehicles with electrical transmission systems (diesel-electric locomotives, electric hybrid vehicles), and battery electric vehicles. Motor types and control Direct-current motors with series field windings are the oldest type of traction motors. These provide a speed-torque characteristic useful for propulsion, providing high torque at lower speeds for the acceleration of the vehicle, and declining torque as speed increases. By arranging the field winding with multiple taps, the speed characteristic can be varied, allowing relatively smooth operator control of acceleration. A further measure of contro

A contribution to energy saving in induction motors

Electric motors consume over half of the electrical energy produced by power stations, almost the three-quarters of the electrical consumption in industry and almost the half of commercial electrical consumption in developed countries. Motors are by far the most important type of electric charges, and so constitute the main targets to achieve energy saving. Owing to their simple and robust construction, the asynchronous motors and especially those of squirrel-cage types, represent about 90-95% of the electrical energy consumption of electric motors, which is equivalent to about 53% of total electrical energy consumption. They are widely used as electrical drives in industrial, commercial, public service, traction and domestic applications. Owing to the importance of induction motors, this thesis is aimed at contributing to energy saving efforts, more specifically in the field of low power induction motors. A contribution is kept in perspective by taking into consideration the energy saving potential during the motor design stage as well as during its operation. Every effort to save energy in motor application can be made by always attempting to use energy only as much as what needed during its operation. The best way is to exploit the saving potential during motor design, while at the same time taking into account its intended application. It can be achieved either through the improvement of motor design or through the reduction of its input electrical energy when the motor has already been built. These two efforts are studied, elaborated and worked out thoroughly in this thesis. To attain this objective, a synthesis has been started with the description of how to model an induction motor. To obtain a better model, an improvement is proposed by using the Schwarz-Christoffel mapping to calculate the slot leakage inductance in induction motor. With such method, slot-leakage inductance can be determined more precisely, resulting in more accurate prediction of motor characteristics. It is based on the stored magnetic energy calculation using two-directional field distribution in the slot. The air gap influence can be observed easily, so that a reasonable slot leakage definition can be adopted. Unlike the conventional method, which is only suitable for rectangular slots (otherwise empirical corrections are required), the proposed general slot form can be extended to any desired polygonal slot form. Consideration of saturation is also indispensable because ignoring it could result in inaccuracy in motor performance prediction. Considering the saturation is essential owing to its important role in self-excitation phenomenon to establish voltage build-up in induction generator. However, the self-excitation phenomenon is undesirable in certain group of capacitor motors as it may hinder the switching-off process and mechanical braking at a desired moment. The undesirable switching-off failure condition is to be avoided by properly designing the capacitor motor. Like in this capacitor motor special application, where a proper design is useful from the point of view of operation safety, designing properly a motor is also very important in energy saving efforts. Motor design and optimization to minimize losses as well as to make possible wide speed-range motor operation are some of the efforts. However, when induction motor has already been built, saving energy is only possible by managing its supplying electrical energy. Various strategies are possible and a particular emphasis on the use of triac to reduce motor input voltage is presented. Besides, a brief economic saving evaluation is given to draw attention to the energy saving potential.

EPFL2005

Contribution to the Ultra-Fast Charging of Electric Vehicles

Rosa Martel Danoary Tsirinomeny

It is generally agreed that one of the drawbacks of a conventional vehicle is the inability to always reach the best operating point of the engine and the inability to regenerate the kinetic energy. Meaning, even with the help of the gearbox or automatic transmission, there is no way to reach more efficient operating points without increasing the power and then there is nowhere to store the excess of the energy converted. Electric vehicles (EVs) offer an opportunity for intelligent motion by working at the best operating point during driving mode, as well as a smart energy management during charging mode. However, it is well-known that the EV has been criticised due to its range anxiety, its limited compatibility with various charging points, its high cost, as well as its limited capability to ride-through a thermal runaway, etc. Today, the range anxiety seems to be resolved by the fact that a significate development is foreseen in the field of the battery cells market for portable equipment such as cell phones, pads, laptops, etc; the same battery technology can be deployed for EVs. Actually, battery packs in EVs tend to have high energy and power densities which will exert a strong thermal stress upon them. This means that individual battery cells are more prone to decline away and eventually fail early because of an excessive loss of capacity and an increase of the internal resistance caused by accelerated aging. Moreover, for electromechanical reasons, each cell is totally unbalanced in operating mode. Therefore, a suitable battery management system should be installed and the capability of the EV to ride-through thermal runaways must be guaranteed. Furthermore, in order to overcome the difference between AC and DC charging station standards, the EV on-board charger has to be flexible for various levels of charging modes (from AC household basic supply to AC or DC ultrafast charging). In order to meet the EV requirements, an advanced power converter which driven efficiency, power density is required. Therefore, the configurable modular multilevel converter (CMMC) has been introduced. It is part of a family of modular multilevel converters, also known as MMC, M2C or DSCC. Hence, its heritage allows bringing the whole advantages to EV applications. In addition it carries the surname of configurable because the converter plays a double role: in fact, it merge the traction converter and the bidirectional charger as well as the battery balancer converter, which not only increases the modularity and the scalability of the power modules but it reduces the cost, condenses the volume. In detail, the concept is linked to the idea of replacing the branch inductance of the standard MMC by the tapped stator windings of the traction motor itself. This allows operating the stator windings as current filter during charging mode. In addition, the famous EV battery pack is split into the MMC submodule. This will increase the fault ride-through capabilities of the Flex-EV battery against thermal runaways, by increasing the capability of the system to work under fault condition. In addition, states of charge (SoC) balancing are implemented at the level of modulation in order to balance that submodule battery state of charge. This is based on a selecting and sorting algorithm, which connect and disconnect the batteries submodules actively according to the sign of the generated AC current wave form and the SoC of the submodules batteries.

EPFL2016

Maximum Control Structure of a Series Hybrid Electric Vehicle using Supercapacitor

Philippe Barrade

The main problem with Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV) is the management of batteries. We suggest to replace the batteries by an energy storage ystem made of supercapacitors on a series HEV with two traction drive. A maximum Control Structure (MCS) of such an HEV is presented to organize the control of the different subsystems. MCS is based on specific inversion rules of Energetic Macroscopic Representation (EMR). This methodology leads to a global model of the system and its deduced control. Moreover, this enable to identify precisely the maximum control for the chopper associated with the supercapacitors. The simulation of an Extra Urban Driving Cycle (EUDC) is provided.

2005

Contribution to the Ultra-Fast Charging of Electric Vehicles

Rosa Martel Danoary Tsirinomeny

EPFL2016

A contribution to energy saving in induction motors

EPFL2005