Advanced Design and Manufacturing Techniques for Electric Machines – Simulation and Test
Organizers
Prof. David Lowther, Professor, McGill University
Abstract
The session is intended to provide a series of presentations highlighting the industrial needs and processes for electrical machine design and manufacture and recent university research which is targeted at addressing these needs. The topics covered will range from the design process, as illustrated by the V-cycle approach, and including the multi-physics performance of a proposed motor-drive system; the use of additive manufacturing technologies to enable the implementation of machine topologies which cannot be constructed using conventional, mostly subtractive, manufacturing techniques; and the use of state of the art machine learning techniques to enhance and assist in the design of novel electrical machine architectures. Finally, while “digital twin” technology is driving simulation to new levels and, hopefully, reducing the number of prototypes needed, the physical implementation must be tested to verify the performance of the real device and the issues involved in fast and accurate testing will be discussed.
Short Bio of Organizers
David Lowther received a B.Sc. (Hons) degree in Electrical Engineering from King’s College, London in 1970 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Brighton Polytechnic in 1973. He was a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at Imperial College, London until 1979 working with C.J.Carpenter on the simulation and measurement of electromagnetic fields. In 1979, he moved to the Department of Electrical Engineering at McGill University and was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in 1986. He was Chair of the Department from 1998 to 2006. His research interests have centered on the simulation of low frequency electromagnetic devices and the computer implementation of the design process for such devices. In 1978, together with P.Silvester and E.Freeman, he founded of Infolytica Corporation, the first company with the specific goal of generating solutions to industrial level electromagnetic field problems on a personal computer. He has published over 300 papers in journals and conferences. He is currently the President of the International Compumag Society and is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the Institution of Engineering and Technology and a Technical Director with the Mechanical Analysis Division of Mentor Graphics, a Siemens Business.
Speakers and presentations
1. James Hendershot, MotorSolver LLC
Fundamental Design Process of Common Electric Machines
2. Tanvir Rahman, Siemens Digital Industries Software
Multi-Physical Simulations in Electric Machine Design – Challenges and Opportunities
3. Fabien Chauvicourt, Siemens Digital Industry Software NV, Belgium
Virtual Integration for Multi-Attribute Analysis of Electric Drives
4. David Lowther, McGill University
Machine Learning Techniques for the Topology Optimization of Electrical Machines
5. Pragasen Pillay, Concordia University
Additive manufacturing of complex shape hard magnetic materials for PM machines
6. Narayan Kar, University of Windsor
Fast, Accurate and Comprehensive Testing of Traction Machines