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CCME 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1815 (2021) 012042 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1815/1/012042

A Yokeless Axial Flux Induction Motor for Electric Vehicles

Based on Grain-oriented Silicon Steel

Pinglin Huang, Hang Li* and Chen Yang

Mechanical Engineering Dept. of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

*Corresponding author email: huangluo@ujs.edu.cn

Abstract. A novel axial flux induction motor is proposed as the driving machine for electric
vehicle, the motor consists of two rotors and one yokeless stator. Benefit from this structure,
grain-oriented silicon steel can be used to reduce the weight and improve efficiency. The
present paper provides the basic topology of the motor, discussing the design method and
analyzing the performance. A prototype is designed, considering the 3D finite element method
is time-consuming and inefficient, analytical calculation method is deduced to calculate the
performance of the prototype, the results agree with those obtained by finite element
calculation, that verifies the effectiveness of this method.
Keywords: Axial flux induction motor; Grain-oriented silicon steel; Yokeless; Finite element
method.

1. Introduction
In recent years, with the rise of electric vehicles(EVs) axial flux motor(AFM) has gained more
attention due to its compact space, small size and high power density. Axial flux permanent magnet
motors(AFPMs) are widely used in aviation, automobile and other fields[1].However, expensive
permanent magnet materials limit its application range. Compared with AFPM, axial flux induction
motor(AFIM) has simpler structure, lower cost and higher reliability,it has also obtained a lot of
research[2]. In[3],an axial flux induction motor is proposed for EVs,which has two stators and two
rotors with reduced back iron. In[4],by selecting the appropriate rotor slot, the harmonic component of
the air gap flux density of axial flux induction motor is weakened to improve the output torque.
In[5],single side axial flux induction motor(SSAFIM) and dual rotor motor(DRAFIM) are compared,
the results show that DRAFIM has significant advantages in output performance.
For DRAFIM, when the magnetic circuit is in the form of NS topology, the flux can enter the air gap
through the stator teeth, and finally forms a closed magnetic circuit through the rotor yoke. Therefore,
the flux forms a closed loop without passing through the stator yoke,which makes it possible to
remove the stator yoke.When the stator yoke is reduced, it becomes a yokeless dual rotor axial flux
induction motor(YDRAFIM), the motor becomes lighter and more efficient, and the stator is divided
into many separate teeth. In YDRAFIM, the magnetic field is expected to be along the axis of the
motor in most teeth, which also provides a reason to use grain-oriented(GO) silicon steel to make the
stator. GO silicon steel has the characteristics of anisotropy, high permeability and low loss in rolling
direction, it is applied to motors to improve motor performance[6-9].
In this paper, a prototype of YDRAFIM is designed. Considering that the 3D finite element method
takes a long time and is inefficient, the analytical calculation method is derived to calculate the
performance of the prototype, and the results are compared with those of finite element calculation.

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution
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CCME 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1815 (2021) 012042 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1815/1/012042

2. Yokeless Axial Flux Induction Motor

Due to the special magnetic circuit structure, the stator yoke can be removed to form a yokeless stator
structure.Figure 1(a) shows the process of this change. The yokeless stator saves weight and
unnecessary iron losses. Furthermore, GO material can be used to make stator tooth.The YDRAFIM
proposed in this paper is composed of one disc-shaped stator and two rotors, the disc-shaped with 18
teeth is sandwiched between dual rotors, as shown in the figure 1(b).Each stator tooth is wound with a
group of coils in the form of centralized winding. Each phase has 6 coils, which are connected in
series. The stator teeth with concentrated winding are distributed along the circumference direction
and fixed by bracket to form the stator part of the motor.
Rotor part is composed of rotor cage and rotor core. The two rotors are symmetrically assembled
along the axial direction, with the same air gap length between both sides and the stator. Rotor cage
comprises rotor bars and an inner and an outer end ring, the rotor bars are connected together through
the end rings to form a short circuit.

(a) (b)
Figure 1. (a)Process of yoke change (b) Topology of yokeless DRAFIM

2.1. Segmented Stator Core with GO Material

There are 18 independent teeth in the stator core, a stator bracket is manufactured to fix the teeth in a
circumferential direction, as shown in the figure 2(c).

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 2. Processing of stator (a) Lamination (b) Single tooth (c)Stator
The stator tooth shown in figure 2(b) is laminated by I-type lamination which change in size in turn.
Figure 2(a) shows the first and last two laminations. Taking the rolling direction of the GO silicon
steel as the flux direction of the stator core can effectively utilize the advantages of GO material,
improve the performance of the motor.
GO silicon sheet is a kind of special electrical steel. It has the best magnetic properties in rolling
direction, with higher permeability and lower loss than non-oriented(NO) silicon sheet. When
laminating the stator tooth, it is necessary to strictly control the rolling direction of GO material along
the axial direction of the motor. The GO material used in the prototype is 30Q120, figure 3(a) shows
its BH curve in rolling direction, as a contrast, the BH curve of the NO silicon sheet 35W270 is shown.
The loss performance curves of these materials are shown in Figure 3(b). It can be seen that GO
silicon steel sheet has better magnetic conductivity and lower loss than NO silicon steel sheet.

(a) (b)
Figure 3. (a) GO and NO BH curve (b) GO and NO loss performance at 60Hz

2
CCME 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1815 (2021) 012042 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1815/1/012042

2.2. Dual Rotor

Figure 4 shows the single rotor of YDRAFIM. The rotor squirrel cage is made of aluminum, including
bars and end rings. Two rotors are symmetrically distributed along the axis. When the motor operating,
the closed rotor bars cut the stator magnetic field and induce the electromotive force and current, thus
generating the electromagnetic torque and making the rotor rotate.

Figure 4. Squirrel cage and rotor

2.3. Prototype Parameters

A prototype is designed. The parameters of the prototype are listed in Table 1.
Table 1. Structure parameters.
Parameter Value Parameter Value
Outer diameter 187mm Number of rotor slot 22
Inner diameter 130mm Number of poles 12
Stator height 44.8mm Winding per slot 160
Rotor height 16mm Winding form Concentrated winding
Number of stator tooth 18 Core material 30Q130
Stator/rotor /DW270-35

3. Analytical Calculation
Although the magnetic circuit model of YDRAFIM is different from traditional induction motor, the
analytical calculation method is similar. According to the ampere loop law, the subsection calculation
method can be used to make the magnetic circuit design more convenient. Because of the special
structure of the axial flux motor, the magnetic field is non-uniform along the radial direction, so the
equivalent calculation method can be used. In this paper, the average diameter method is used for
calculation.

3.1. Magnetic Circuit Model

In order to calculate the magnetic potential of each part of the motor, it is necessary to deduce the
magnetic circuit model of the motor. For yokeless DRAFIM, the magnetic circuit model can be shown
in figure 5.
Since the stator yoke is removed, the magnetic potential of the motor is composed of air gap magnetic
potential, stator tooth magnetic potential and rotor yoke and tooth magnetic potential. Assuming that
the two symmetrical rotor teeth, yoke and air gap have the same magnetic potential, the magnetic force
balance formula of the motor is as equation (1).

Figure 5. Magnetic circuit of motor

F  F 1  F 2  Ft1  Ft 21  Ft 22  F j 21  F j 22
 2 F 1  Ft1  2 Ft 21  2 F j 21
(1)

3
CCME 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1815 (2021) 012042 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1815/1/012042

Where, F is the total potential. Then, the magnetizing current I m is calculated by equation(2).

4.44 pF
Im 
mN  k w (2)
Where, p is the number of the pairs, m is the number of phases, N  is number of winding per phase, k w
is the winding factor.
The air gap flux  and air gap flux density B under rated load should be discussed by equation(3) and
(4).
k U 1

2.22 fN  k w
(3)
8 p
B 
 ( D1  D 22 )a
2
(4)
Where, k  is the full-load potential unit value and a is the polar arc coefficient,D1is outer diameter,D2
is the inner diameter.

3.2. Parameter Calculation

The power current of the motor I KW is given by the following equation(5).
I K W  PN m U 1 (5)
It is composed of reactive current component and active current component. The unit value of active

current component i p is as follows:

i p*  1 
(6)
Where,  is the presupposed efficiency of the motor.

The unit value of reactive current component iR consists of reactance current unit value is and
   
excitation current unit value im , as iR  im  is . Each component can be obtained from the following
formula:

  
is  x i p 1  xi p
2
 2

im*  I m I KW
(7)
Here, x  is the unit value of total leakage reactance, which is obtained from the leakage reactance of
* 
stator x1 and the leakage reactance of rotor x2  , x   x1  x2  ,   1  im x1 .
According to the unit value of active current component and reactive current component, the unit
value of stator current i1 can be obtained:
2 2
i1  i p  iR
(8)
Combined with the above calculation, the actual value of stator current I1 can be obtained by
theoretical calculation:
I1  i1* I KW (9)

4
CCME 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1815 (2021) 012042 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1815/1/012042

3.3. Analytical Calculation Results

According to the equation(1)-(9), parameter calculation can refer to the calculation method of
traditional induction motor, the results can be seen in Table 2.
Table 2. Calculated results.
Parameter Results Parameter Results Parameter Results
B 0.56T is 0.907 I1 12.4A
 1.04  0.32 5.4A
i p x 1
Im
im 0.93 x2
 0.142 I KW 5.88A
iR 1.84 i1 2.11 PN 4kw

4. Finite Element Calculation

4.1. FEM
In order to verify the results of analytical calculation the finite element method is used to analyse the
yokeless DRAFIM. Because the axial flux motor is not suitable to be simplified to 2D model, it must
be analyzed using 3D FEM. It takes a long time to analyze and calculate this motor. Considering the
symmetry, only 1/2 of the model is analyzed. In the finite element analysis of the double rotor model,
two band regions need to be constructed. Figure 6 shows the mesh of the motor in 3D calculation.

(a) (b)
Figure 6. The 3D mesh of the prototype (a)Rotor (b)Stator
When analyzing the starting performance of DRAFIM, it is necessary to apply the corresponding
moment of inertia to the rotating part of the motor, for this motor, J  0.0228kg  m2 . For the
anisotropic GO material, a local coordinate system is required for each stator tooth. The three
coordinate axes are defined as the easy magnetization axes, the difficult magnetization axes and the
lamination direction of silicon steel sheets.

4.2. Results and Validation

The no-load starting performance of DRAFIM with GO material is calculated by 3D FEM. The rated
voltage is supplied to make the motor start at no-load, and the no-load current is illustrated in the
figure 7(a).The full load current is shown in figure 7(b).The values of no-load current and full load
current are 6.0A and 12.2A respectively, they are close to the analytical calculation values of 5.4A and
12.4A.

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Figure 7. (a)No-load current (b) Full load current (c) Rated torque (d) Speed
Figure 7(c),(d) shows the rated torque at 1900rpm,the value is 19.7Nm.According to the result of the
analytical calculation, the rated power is 4kw,it can be calculated that the rated torque is 20.2Nm,this
value is also closed to the FEM value. These prove the accuracy of the analytical calculation method.

5
CCME 2020 IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1815 (2021) 012042 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1815/1/012042

5. Conclusion
In this paper, a yokeless dual rotor axial flux induction motor is designed, which is different from the
traditional induction motor. The stator is made of GO silicon steel and the stator is yokeless. This
paper introduces the basic topology of the motor, discusses the design method, and deduces the
analytical calculation method for performance analysis. The structure parameters of a prototype are
given, and the performance is analytically calculated. Three-dimension finite element method is used
to analyze the characteristic of the motor, the FEM results agree with the analytical calculation results
very well, it means that the design method is correct. Through further optimization design, this kind of
motor is expected to be widely used in electric vehicles

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