Flux Switching Permanent Magnet Motor with Metal Amorphous Nanocomposite Soft Magnetic Material and Rare Earth Free Permanent Magnets

The power losses in high power-density motors due to high rotational speed and/or high pole counts may be reduced adopting metal amorphous nanocomposites (MANCs) featuring low power loss and a relatively high flux density ($\sim$1.3 T). We recently proposed a flux switching permanent magnet (FSPM) motor with a rating of 2.5 kW at 1400 Hz electrical speed that incorporates low loss (<3W/kg at 1 kHz) FeNi-based MANC with projected iron loss of about 5 W. The motor design allows use of rare earth-free permanent magnets. To incorporate MANCs, an axial flux motor with rotor and stator cores made from a wound ribbon has been developed. We performed 3-d FEA to optimize the design and built and tested a prototype showing that low loss MANC material can be used for motor applications with high magnetic switching frequency.