Master Thesis - Electric Motor Control

Infinite motion for the future"
InfiMotion Technology develops, manufactures, and sells high performance electric drive units for fully electric vehicles, addressing the whole value chain, including production software and single components.

InfiMotion was founded in 2021 in Wuxi, China, and lead investors are companies such as Geely Auto, Lotus and Ningbo Luma, with a professional board of directors with experienced powertrain and automotive executives from well-known Geely Holding companies.

By the end of 2022, InfiMotion aims to have 700 experienced employees across two R&D Centers in Gothenburg Sweden and in Wuxi China. The InfiMotion team has been responsible for over two million sold units to date, by which over 90 000 were delivered to the European market. The first batch of new high-performance products will go into production in late 2022.

Title: Optimized Pulse Patterns for Motor Control Considering Spatial Harmonics

Background:

InfiMotion is a newly created company, owned by Geely, which is developing and producing electric drive units (including inverters, motors and gearboxes) for electric vehicles. This project focuses on motor control and improving the interaction between the motor and the inverter. The goal is to evaluate, through simulations:

- Possible benefits for the motor of using motor control based on Optimized Pulse Patterns (OPP) instead of conventional Space Vector PWM (SVPWM).
- Possible benefits for the inverter of using OPP.
- Required accuracy of OPP switching angles (which in turn puts requirements on motor control speed)


Scope:

The project includes generating candidate pulse patterns and setting up automated simulation methods to evaluate and optimize these with respect to motor losses and torque ripple. Contrary to most of the previous work on OPPs, motor spatial harmonics should be included in the analysis. The analysis will be done for permanent magnet motor(s). Simulation tools to use are, proposedly, Ansys Maxwell and Matlab/Simulink.

Goals:

- Create optimized pulse patterns and evaluate reduction in motor losses and torque ripple compared to SVPWM for different operating points in the torque-speed envelope.
- Evaluate the sensitivity of losses and torque ripple with respect to switching angles in order to quantify the speed/accuracy requirement of the motor control.


Prerequisites:

- Master student in Electrical Engineering, Automotive Engineering, or similar
- Good knowledge of power electronic converters and electric machines
- Good knowledge of Matalb/Simulink
- Experience of FEM-based electric machine analysis
- Ability to take initiative and work independently


Information:

Number of students: 1, please apply with CV, cover letter, and manuscript (optional).

Starting date: January 2023. The duration of the thesis work is 20 weeks.

Process

Last application date will be 30/11 but interview and selection process will be ongoing so please send us your application as soon as possible!

If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Pär Ingelström par.ingelstrom@infimotiontec.com or Dr. Simon Klacar, simon.klacar@infimotiontec.com

Note, due to GDPR regulations we are only accepting applications through Teamtailor - no email - so click the apply button below and start your application now!