There is a continual demand for high speed advanced electrical machines and drives for wide ranging applications in all market sectors.
The motivation for their development varies considerably. However, common objectives are to improve efficiency, and, thereby, to conserve energy and reduce environmental pollution, increase power density, enhance functionality, and improve reliability and maintainability and is also being driven by legislation, consumer expectations regarding performance and more fierce competition in the market place.
Many of the applications pose particularly severe challenges in terms of the rotational speed and/or space envelope constraints, the thermal operating environment, for example, whilst others are particularly challenging in terms of being highly cost-sensitive or safety critical.
Past many industrial applications have utilized existing technology to achieve high rotational shaft speeds. Direct drive high-speed machines or a slow-speed electric motor coupled with a speed increasing gearbox has typically generated the necessary shaft speeds. But advances in high-speed motor technology, along with improvements in the cost and performance of power electronic drives, materials and non-conventional bearings along with more efficient cooling methods, permits an alternative approach using high-speed machines which can directly drive, or be driven by, a high-speed system such as turbine, compressor or other turbomachinery. This results in significant performance benefits such as reduction in motor generator size, as well as reduced motor generator cost and simplified integration. Integration of these small, highly efficient machines into the coupled equipment further reduces cost and complexity Recently, researchers are focusing on the design of high-speed, super high-speed, or even ultra-high-speed machines for applications such as turbo-chargers/ superchargers, compressors, spindles, blowers, pumps, flywheel energy storage systems, and machine tools that require higher speed drives. Such high-speed machinery would include gas compressors, pumps, centrifuges, distributed generation units (microturbines), spindles and flywheel energy storage, and high-speed motors and alternators as examples of electric machines. DRIVE, CONTROL, AUTOMATION: HIGH SPEED MACHINES ISSUE: MARCH 2014 The increasing interest in these types of machines is partially due to the very small size and weight achievable in comparison to machines using conventional design strategies.
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