Towards highest energy efficiency

Ever more stringent European Union regulations are driving the market trend towards higher efficiency electrical machines. As a result, our electrical steel customers are being compelled to make more than incremental improvements to their products.

In order to survive, these e-motor and generator producers need to model and design new topologies with higher accuracy and to reconsider their production processes. Simply switching to more advanced electrical steel grades will not yield the optimal results in terms of energy efficiency. Hence, there’s a need for close cooperation between the electrical steel producer and the e-machine producer to tackle this issue with an integrated approach.

OCAS has vast expertise in developing advanced electrical steel grades to meet demands optimally. In addition, our researchers also assist customers in improving the accuracy of their modelling tools in optimising the implementation of these advanced grades, and in characterising the effect of production steps on material and machine performance.

Need to reconsider “taken-for-granted” technologies

Within a highly cost-driven market for industry  applications of electrical steels, European directives urge our industry customers to increase the efficiency of their electrical machines. That’s why established technologies and processes to produce electrical machines are currently being reconsidered and optimised.

This performance-driven approach requires an in-depth analysis of the customer’s processing: it’s important to quantify the (in most cases, deteriorating) effect each processing step has on magnetic performance – on the material level as well as on the final machine performance. Moreover, this know-how is very valuable too in emerging markets such as electric and hybrid vehicles for automotive.

Convincing accuracy

Thanks to our improved iron loss modelling, OCAS researchers are able to illustrate the benefits of smart material selection. Moreover, the model accuracy is increased by also including the effect of processing steps such as punching. With this approach we can help our industry and automotive customers in making the best choices for their design and processing improvements as well as for the optimal electrical steel grades.

 

“Thanks to the close cooperation with our customers in co-engineering projects, we’ve been able to raise our expertise to a higher level. And there’s even more potential for enhancing today’s electrical machine performance.”

Jan Rens, Senior Research Engineer Applications & Solutions department, OCAS