Automated Material Parameter Calibration for an Electric Motor Stator

For accurate prediction of E-motor noise and vibration performance at the design stage, it is important to model the E-Motor stator structural behavior with high fidelity. Orthotropic material properties have been widely used in practice to simulate laminated steel in the stator. In these models, material constants are calibrated to match natural frequencies of critical modes such as oval/triangle/square modes. Typically, identifying accurate material properties is a manual, time-consuming process, involving lots of trial and error. This study presents an automated workflow to calibrate the material properties for the stator with Ansys Mechanical and optiSLang. The developed workflow can track natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes of critical modes, and adjust material constants automatically to find best material parameters for the given frequencies. It can rotate the mode shapes and find the orientation that gives best match to the measurements based on modal assurance criteria (MAC). This workflow has shown a good correlation between simulation and test in terms of natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes for the stator of a switched reluctance motor (SRM). Such an automated workflow enables the fast, efficient material calibration process, therefore accurate electric powertrain NVH simulations.