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For SpaceNut ... we did not have a topic for electric motor design
This topic seems needed because electric motors are now and are always going to be a major part of the technology to sustain life on Mars.
The occasion for creation of this topic is reporting of significant improvement of a very old electric motor design concept that had been discarded due to poor performance.
This topic is available to any NewMars member who would like to contribute to a collection of knowledge about the technology.
The reason the previously discarded design is of interest today is that it eliminates the need for permanent magnets, which (usually) require rare earth metals which (by definition) are ** rare **.
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Post #3: Report on improvement of motor that does not use permanent magnets
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This post is about improvement of a previously discarded electric motor design.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/this … wtab-en-us
The significance of this particular motor is that it does not use permanent magnets.
Instead of using air gaps, Sansone thought he could incorporate another magnetic field into a motor. This would increase this saliency ratio and, in turn, produce more torque. His design has other components, but he can’t disclose any more details because he hopes to patent the technology in the future.
“Once I had this initial idea, then I had to do some prototyping to try and see if that design would actually work,” Sansone says. “I don’t have tons of resources for making very advanced motors, and so I had to make a smaller version—a scale model—using a 3-D printer.”
It took several prototypes before he could test his design.
“I didn't have a mentor to help me, really, so each time a motor failed, I had to do tons of research and try and troubleshoot what went wrong,” he says. “But eventually on the 15th motor, I was able to get a working prototype.”
Sansone tested his motor for torque and efficiency, and then reconfigured it to run as a more traditional synchronous reluctance motor for comparison. He found that his novel design exhibited 39 percent greater torque and 31 percent greater efficiency at 300 revolutions per minute (RPM). At 750 RPM, it performed at 37 percent greater efficiency. He couldn’t test his prototype at higher revolutions per minute because the plastic pieces would overheat—a lesson he learned the hard way when one of the prototypes melted on his desk, he tells Top of the Class, a podcast produced by Crimson Education.
In comparison, Tesla’s Model S motor can reach up to 18,000 RPM, explained the company’s principal motor designer Konstantinos Laskaris in a 2016 interview with Christian Ruoff of the electric vehicles magazine Charged.
Sansone validated his results in a second experiment, in which he “isolated the theoretical principle under which the novel design creates magnetic saliency,” per his project presentation. Essentially, this experiment eliminated all other variables, and confirmed that the improvements in torque and efficiency were correlated with the greater saliency ratio of his design.
“He's definitely looking at things the right way,” Hofmann says of Sansone. “There's the potential that it could be the next big thing.” Though, he adds that many professors work on research their whole lives, and it’s “fairly rare that they end up taking over the world.”
Hofmann says the materials for synchronous reluctance motors are cheap, but the machines are complex and notoriously difficult to manufacture. High manufacturing costs are, therefore, a barrier to their widespread use—and a major limiting factor to Sansone’s invention.
Sansone agrees, but says “with new technologies like additive manufacturing [such as 3-D printing], it would be easier to construct it in the future.”
Sansone says he hadn’t originally planned to enter into the competition. But when he learned that one of his classes allowed him to complete a year-long research project and paper on a topic of his choice, he decided to take the opportunity to continue working on his motor.
“I was thinking if I'm able to put this much energy into it, I might as well make it a science fair project and compete with it,” he explains. After doing well at the district and state competitions, he advanced to ISEF.
Sansone is waiting until his next phase of testing before he approaches any car companies, but he hopes that one day his motor will be the design of choice for electric vehicles.
“Rare-earth materials in existing electric motors are a major factor undermining the sustainability of electric vehicles,” he says. “Seeing the day when EVs are fully sustainable due to the help of my novel motor design would be a dream come true.”
Margaret Osborne is a freelance journalist based in the southwestern U.S. Her work has appeared in the Sag Harbor Express and has aired on WSHU Public Radio .
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