CREATOR – Computational Electric Machine Laboratory

Electric machines have played a major role in energy conversion already for decades. Modern power electronics have brought major improvements and together with the advent of new materials and manufacturing techniques unprecedented opportunities for future innovation exist. Backed by advances in design optimisation and control, novel drive systems provide huge potential to further increase energy conversion efficiency, and thereby contributing to meeting climate goals. While current drive systems are operated in different environments and at variable speeds, current design procedures usually start with an expert’s choice for a particular machine type and topology. Dimensioning is then based on a limited number of parameters and well-chosen operation modes, typically at constant speed or torque. Thereby considerable opportunities for optimisation are missed. Only a paradigm shift towards a fundamentally new integrated simulation and design approach will allow the potential of modern electric drives to be fully exploited. From the outset, this approach must consider all relevant aspects of a machine, e.g. shape and topology, time-dependent operating cycles, complex material behaviour, uncertainties and robustness, new cooling techniques to push thermal limits, noise and vibrations and various key performance indicators. The modelling, simulation and optimisation of such a complex system pose an extreme computational engineering challenge.