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Advancing Electric Machine Development for Automotive Applications with Simulation

Meet design requirements, industry standards, and safety regulations with a comprehensive solution for improved power density, energy efficiency, and operational life of electric machines.

The Road to Opportunity

Between 2021 and 2023, electric vehicles (EVs) represent a $7 trillion market opportunity, and it’s only projected to increase. In a rapidly growing EV market, automakers are turning to advanced design, test, and manufacturing technologies. As part of this effort, engineers push the boundaries of electric machine design for greater efficiency and performance, ultimately driving traction motor adoption. 

Motors are responsible for transforming stored energy into the energy needed for forward movement, with the powertrain and associated systems accountable for distributing, managing, and controlling the vehicle’s energy requirements and efficiency.

When considering the electric drivetrain, several design targets impact the function of the entire vehicle:

  • Energy savings
  • Higher torque and power densities
  • Reduced NVH
  • Reduced costs
  • Shorter development cycles
  • Increased safety & reliability
  • Increased integration
Car driving through city

VIRTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRIC MACHINES WEBINAR SERIES

Automakers desire solutions that can easily scale to new applications of next generation vehicles.

Electrified propulsion technology is one main area where EV engineers are pushing the boundaries. Electric machine design and integration choices have system-level impacts that directly influence an automaker’s time to market and even overall market adoption. 

With Ansys multiphysics simulation workflows and optimization tools, you can get a comprehensive grasp on the multi-objective aspects of motor design in three key areas: electromagnetic, thermal, and mechanical. 

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Ansys Innovating Electric Mobility eBook

Customer Success Stories

electric motors

Democratization of Simulation Advances Electrification

Schaeffler Group designers and engineers have a better design-to-validation workflow for electric machines to reduce reliance on expensive physical prototyping.

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Sumitomo Electric Taps Into Ansys’ Material World to Support More Sustainable Electric Motor Designs

Sumitomo Electric Industries (SEI), a manufacturer of soft magnetic composites (SMCs), used its unique material and high-density, high-precision modeling technology to enable efficient modeling and motor size.

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ZF Leverages Ansys to Produce a Competitive, Power-dense Electric Motor Design 

ZF Friedrichshafen AG looks to Ansys-enabled simulation frameworks and workflows to deliver sustainable solutions to individuals involved in the core development of ZF’s electric motor technology.
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Shrink Development Time and Meet Electric Motor Performance

With many design variables, engineers must rapidly navigate the design space of electrical machines to accelerate the concept and development of efficient and reliable motors and associated electric drive system integration. With our solutions for the concept, design, and specification of electric traction motors, engineers can promptly explore and assess trade-offs between peak torque, efficiency, and material costs, avoiding expensive rework in the design cycle.

  • Comprehensive and powerful geometry templates cover many electric machine technologies, topologies, and cooling systems
  • Ratio-based parameterization options provide unprecedented capabilities for parametric design optimization
electric drive

LEARN HOW TO APPLY SIMULATION FOR THE SPECIFICATION & INITIAL DESIGN OF ELECTRIC MACHINES

motor cad capabilities

The Right Material Properties. The Right Electric Motor.

Maximize Motor Robustness and Minimize Demagnetization with Multiphysics Insights

Get insights into complex physics interactions in and around the traction motor with reliable, accurate electromagnetic simulation. With our solutions for advanced magnetics analysis, all design goals are considered in the initial design of electric motors to avoid unexpected issues further down the line, where there’s a higher cost of change.

  • Study material grades, magnetostriction, vector hysteresis, AC losses, and more with accurate 2D and 3D solvers
  • Perform more robust statistical and optimization analysis of the design space with reliability techniques 
  • Optimize material utilization
  • Rapidly generate efficiency maps and create ROMs 

LEARN HIGH-FIDELITY ELECTROMAGNETICS MODELING FOR ELECTRIC MACHINES

motor cad capabilities

Electromagnetic Performance & Advanced Modeling of Electric Machines Webinar

Discover solutions for addressing questions that commonly occur in the development of electric machines for automotive applications such as rotor skewing, the axial segmentation of permanent magnets, and the short circuit fault tolerance assessment.

3d view of thermal management

Acquire Fast and Optimal Cooling for Reliable and Efficient Electric Motors

Simultaneously consider all electromagnetic, structural/acoustic, and thermal design performance metrics using accurate CFD/thermal solutions that enable faster, more reliable, and more efficient electric machine designs. Avoid build-and-test by modeling and analysis to minimize testing and prototyping only to a subset of best design points.

  • Predict the thermal performance of air and liquid cooling (including oil spray and water jackets)
  • Assess the interdependency of bi-directional electromagnetic and thermal physics coupling
  • Predict temperature distribution in critical components like windings, magnets, and laminations with high-performance computing (HPC)

LEARN HOW TO LEVERAGE MULTIPHYSICS SIMULATION FOR ELECTRIC MOTOR THERMAL MODELING

Cooling Strategies and Thermal Modeling for High Performance Electric Machines

This webinar introduces accurate thermal solutions for cooling system development that enable faster, more reliable and efficient automotive electric traction machines. 

acoustic velocity

Adapt Electric Motor Designs to Reduce NVH While Fulfilling Electrical Performance Requirements

Simulating the noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) of an electric motor is a crucial step in vibro-acoustic design of electric vehicles (EVs). Ansys' solutions for advanced magnetics analysis as well as structural and acoustic modeling enable automakers to reduce the NVH of electric vehicles, improve customer satisfaction and gain competitive advantage in the automotive sector.

LEARN HOW TO LEVERAGE SIMULATION FOR NVH AND ACOUSTICS ANALYSIS

Noise, Vibration, and Harshness Solutions for Electric Vehicles

Get lower development costs and support electric mobility to reach a competitive advantage.

nvh motor