Low-Cost Interior Permanent Magnet Machine With Multiple Magnet Types

This article is a contribution to answer the following question: Is it possible to design a permanent magnet machine with the performance expected from rare-earth magnets but at a lower cost? Performance being understood as torque, size, efficiency, demagnetization, and temperature rise together. The question is addressed with a systematic exploration of different interior permanent magnet machine topologies mixing rare-earth and ferrite permanent magnets. The study starts from a production baseline, the Prius 2010 traction motor, with interior magnets placed in a single V pattern. It investigates various rotor designs, most specifically, single V and double V patterns as well as spoke configurations. The stator cross-section design and winding selection are fixed, providing a solid comparison basis from the point of view of machine cooling. For each rotor design, torque potential and machine material cost are assessed, the latter expressed as torque per dollar. A promising configuration was found based on a spoke pattern for which further modeling was performed to assess efficiency as well as mechanical strength and resistance to short circuits and to demagnetization. It reduces the rare-earth magnet volume by over 60%.