Short Programs

Design of Motors, Generators, and Drive Systems

Date: TBD 2016 | Tuition: TBD | Continuing Education Units (CEUs): TBD
*This course has limited enrollment. Apply early to guarantee your spot.
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Overview  |  Who Should Attend  |  Learning Objectives  |  Program Outline  | 
Course Schedule  |  Participants' Comments  |  Instructors  |  Location

Overview

The construction of aggressive, high-performance motor drives requires a detailed understanding of machine characteristics and associated interactions with power electronic drives. The successful application of modern control techniques, such as field-oriented control, depends critically on an intimate knowledge of machine parameters and characteristics. Lower shaft horsepower drives, for example, may exhibit a relatively speedy decay of electrical transients in comparison to mechanical transient settling times. In very large drives, the situation can be reversed. Even for drives employing machines of the same general type, appropriate analytical approximations, thermal management and modeling, control techniques, and transient performance and disturbance rejection for low and for high power drives may therefore be very different. Computer-based tools for estimating machine parameters and performance can remarkably speed a designer's understanding of when different control and machine design assumptions are applicable, and how gracefully these assumptions fail as performance limits are approached. Hands-on experiments will provide the opportunity to compare analytical results with real motor/drive systems in the laboratory.

In this course, fundamental principles of energy conversion, applicable to all types of electric machinery, are first reviewed to provide analytical foundations for understanding all types of drives. The specific principles of the basic machine types, including synchronous, induction, and variable reluctance machines, are then introduced. Extensive use of computer-based analysis tools will be made as the major classes of machines and their physical basis for operation are reviewed. Next, control strategies for the different machine types will be discussed, all with extensive use of computer-based simulation tools. Power electronic circuits required to drive the machines will be considered and a real drive circuit will be constructed, de-bugged, and tested by each participant. Throughout the course, performance considerations, trade-offs, and different design approaches will be presented. Access to computer facilities, analysis routines, and laboratory hardware facilities will be provided for practice machine analysis design and test.

Who Should Attend

This subject is directed at electrical engineering professionals who design or apply electric machinery, power electronic drives, and electromechanical systems that work on the same physical principles as electric machinery. Electric machines and drives are major consumers of electrical energy. A thorough understanding of machines and drives is essential for engineers working with or interfacing to renewable generation sources and the electric utility system. Electric machines are employed in a very wide range of businesses and industries, including consumer goods, space conditioning, manufacturing, automotive and rail transportation, air and sea transportation, electric, gas and water utilities, drilling and mining, alternative energy, and military systems. Professionals who design systems that employ electric machinery for generation or as motors in any of these industries will gain a deeper understanding of how electric machines operate. Professionals who design electric machines will gain a deeper understanding of the physical principles and design techniques.

Required Background

A basic knowledge of electric circuit analysis and working familiarity with principles of electromagnetism is needed.

Learning Objectives

• Describe fundamental principles of energy conversion which are the analytical foundations for understanding all types of drives.
• Identify the principals of the basic machine types, including synchronous, induction, and variable reluctance machines.
• Evaluate the use of computer-based analysis tools to review the major classes of machines and their physical basis for operation.
• Describe control strategies for the different machine types, following the use of computer-based simulation tools.
• Examine very high performance machine designs, such as extremely high speed drives.
• Analyze performance considerations, trade-offs, and different design approaches.
• Evaluate the hands-on use of machine analysis and design, using computer facilities and analysis routines.

Program Outline

Lectures will be given each morning. In the afternoons, students will work with the instructors in a computer facility to explore and develop design routines for electric drives. Registrants will receive course notes, reprints of references, and a suite of programs written in MATLAB for assisting in the design of electric machines.

• Elements of energy conversion: energy, co-energy, force, and torque as derivatives of energy, field-based force calculations.
• Energy conversion in electric machines: force and shear density, machine power density, and efficiency.
• Review of the principles of the basic machines types: synchronous, induction, variable reluctance.
• Introduction to and exercises in the use of MATLAB.
• Induction machines in some depth: reduction to an equivalent circuit and calculation of the elements of the circuit.
• Performance evaluation of induction machines.
• Field-oriented control of induction machines.
• Permanent magnet machines: review of basics, principles of energy conversion, and design fundamentals.
• Control strategies for PM machines: torque/speed limitations, taking advantage of negative saliency, elements of field oriented control.
• Unusual machine designs.

Course Schedule and Registration times

View 2015 Course Schedule (pdf)

Registration is 8:45 - 9:00 am on Monday.

Class runs 9:30 am - 5:00 pm on Monday and 8:30 am - 5:00 pm each subsequent day.

Laptops, especially with MATLAB installed, are encouraged. Additional software will be provided.

Participants' Comments

DIRECTOR of ENGINEERING, REMY INTERNATIONAL
"Good combination of theoretical/mathematical treatment with actual machine discussion. Well done combination of machine and control with two professors."

Engineering manager, Pfizer
"Enjoyable. Stimulating. Focused. Professional."

Electrical & Controls Engineer, BP America
"The level of instruction offered by the course instructors was excellent...The amount of material covered was impressive."

electro-mechanical engineer, hartzell engine technology
"Both lecturers were easy to follow and understand and seem very skilled in both their fields and their communication skills."

Instructors

James L. Kirtley Jr. attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning the S.B., S.M., E.E. and Ph.D. degrees in 1968, 1968, 1969, and 1971, respectively. He joined the faculty at MIT in 1971 and is now Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1974 and 1975 he was with General Electric in Schenectady, New York. In 1993 and 1994 he was Gastdozent at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In 1998 he joined SatCon Technology Corporation as Vice and General Manager of the Tech Center. He returned to MIT full-time in 2000. 

Kirtley is a specialist in electric machinery and electric power systems engineering. He has participated in broadly-based research and development programs in several related areas, including superconducting electric machinery, large machinery for ship propulsion, monitoring of electric power systems and equipment, magnetic bearings, and magnetic levitation and design of electric machinery. In addition to core subjects in electrical engineering and computer science, his teaching activities include graduate and undergraduate subjects in electric machinery and electric power systems. Kirtley has published more than 50 articles in journals and IEEE magazines and more than 80 conference papers. He is the named inventor of 24 U.S. patents.

Kirtley was Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion from 1998 to 2006. He is a member of CIGRE and was for a time a National Expert for Study Committee 11. He is a member of the editorial board of Electric Power Components and Systems. He served as Conference Chairman of the International Conference on Electric Machines, 1990, and was Program Chair of the International Electric Machines and Drives Conference, 2001. Kirtley is a Life Fellow of IEEE. He was recipient of one of the IEEE Third Millennium Medals (2000) and was the recipient of the 2002 Nikola Tesla Award. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in Massachusetts and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Steven B. Leeb received his bachelor of science and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 and 1993, respectively. He currently serves as Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems. Additionally, he has a joint appointment in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Leeb is concerned with the design, analysis, development, and maintenance processes for all kinds of machinery with electrical actuators, sensors, or power electronic drives. He is particularly interested in the study of mechatronics: devices that are high performance systems designed to exhibit an extraordinary power density, volume, range or quality of motion, or combination of these and other qualities. A major thrust in his current research is the development of power electronic drives and supplies for servomechanical and industrial applications, including medical drug delivery devices, battery chargers, motion controllers, and fluorescent lamp ballasts.

Among other classes, he teaches power electronics and the application of microcontrollers at MIT. He is the author or co-author of over 100 publications and 17 patents in the fields of electromechanics and power electronics. Leeb is a Fellow of the IEEE and has served as guest editor for a special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Digital Control in Power Electronics. He has received a number of teaching awards at MIT, including the Bose, Edgerton, and Spira teaching prizes.

Location

This course takes place on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.