A High-Efficiency Propulsion Motor With Distributed High-Density Winding Technology

This article presents the development of an electric motor with the novel distributed high-density (DHD) winding technology. The DHD winding technology utilizes round wires instead of bar wires. Unlike conventional round-wire winding technique (shed winding), the wires are orderly positioned in the slots in the DHD winding technology, resulting in high fill factor and high efficiency. The implementation of a stator with the DHD winding is presented which utilizes state-of-the-art coil winding and assembly processes. To compare against existing stator designs, a 100 kW, 800 V, and 15 000 RPM propulsion motor is tested experimentally to validate the performance of the DHD winding technology. The acoustic noise behavior of the propulsion motor is also characterized experimentally. The motor efficiency with the DHD, hairpin, and shed windings is compared for the same stator geometry using simulation results to demonstrate the performance improvement with the DHD winding technology.