About EMTC

Today’s society is focused on energy transition. In this context, the Electrical Machines Technical Committee (EMTC) and its members are working on electromechanical energy conversion systems, based on electrical machines and power electronics, as depicted in the figure below. The considered applications include transportation electrification, grid-connected systems, energy production from renewables, energy harvesting, fault tolerant systems, and high-efficiency industrial conversion systems.

The EMTC and its members are strongly involved in the organization of the International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM); the Symposium on Diagnostics for Electrical Machines, Power Electronics and Drives (SDEMPED); and the Workshop on Electrical Machines Design, Control and Diagnosis (WEMDCD). The EMTC is managing the technical tracks of the IES conferences related to electrical machines and drives with the goal to promote this field and its applications within the IES.

Future Trends within EMTC Members Group

The need for more efficient conversion systems and transportation electrification has accelerated research in all fields of interest of the EMTC, as shown in the below figure.

More efficient conversion systems require the optimization of electrical machine electromagnetic design to achieve specific performance levels (reduced torque ripple and increased efficiency and torque production), thermal and electrical design to obtain increased torque density, the integration of electrical machines with power electronics for traction applications to increase power density, and to implement new functionalities, such as integrated battery chargers.

In addition, the application of wide bandgap (WBG) devices such as silicon carbide to electrical drives will put additional stress on the insulation material of the electrical machines’ windings due to the high dv/dt of the voltage pulses applied by the power converter. Therefore, the internal voltage distribution of a winding during switching transients needs to be accurately investigated to protect the winding insulation.

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis and prognosis are critical to ensure the reliability and efficient operation of the energy conversion devices in those processes where they are involved. Future research in the condition monitoring area will be mainly oriented toward the following areas:

- The development of advanced techniques and methods capable of predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of electric motor components

- The development of advanced diagnosis algorithms adapted to any operation regime of the machine (including transient operation)

- The application of artificial intelligence methods to perform an automatic determination of the fault condition without user intervention

- The optimization and integration of the analysis of different quantities in smart sensors that enable an integral diagnosis of the motor

- The extension of current techniques to the determination of the condition of the motor drive train and other components of the kinematic chain.

In terms of electrical drives control, there are three new major directions:

1) Speed sensorless control and self-commissioning: The new trend is to integrate the electrical excitation for rotor-position estimation into the converter pulse width modulation or other schemes used for voltage pulse pattern generation. Very often, the industry requires sensorless control solutions that should be proposed together with self-commissioning algorithms to obtain the so-called plug-and-play control.

2) Multiphase drives and fault-tolerant control: Compared to the three-phase solution, increasing the phase number allows for the reduction of the phase current without increasing the voltage per phase. The machine can still run with one or more faulted phases. Therefore, the multiphase drive become particularly interesting for safety-critical applications, such as more-electric aircraft and traction applications, as well as energy production with large wind generators. In the near future, it is expected that interest will be on the control solutions that are fault tolerant, i.e., to enable keeping the electrical machine running in case of phase faults.

3) Predictive motor control: The use of model predictive control (MPC) schemes enables obtaining the best dynamic performance and a less demanding tuning procedure with respect to conventional control schemes based on linear controllers, as there are no controller gains to be calibrated during the final drive tests for the application. The literature reports two main MPC solutions: 1) finite control set MPC (FCS-MPC) and 2) continuous control set MPC (CCSMPC). In FCS-MPC schemes, the inverter switching frequency is variable, while CCS-MPC methods employ a pulse width modulator, leading to constant switching frequency. The future trend is toward the consolidation of MPC for industrial applications, employing three-phase and multiphase motor drives.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the IEEE-IES Electrical Machines Technical Committee, please fill in the following form:

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