Aran Prakobsant, Dhidik Prastiyanto, Chonlatee Photong
Dual electric motor drives inherently provide easier torque control, better acceleration, and robust handling. However, they have some drawbacks related to high weight, cost and complexity, which would need more research to eliminate these issues. This paper proposes the development of analytical and practical models to determine the optimum power-weight ratio for electric motors used in the dual motor drive systems in order to achieve maximum regenerative power generation during braking. The case studies of commonly used 3-phase induction motors for electric automotive applications were observed with the operating power rate in the range between 0.18 – 375 kW. The specifications of the motors of 3 manufacturers: General Electric, Siemens, and ABB, were used for the model development and analysis. The analytical results showed that the maximum regenerative power could be achieved only when two electric motors were identical with the same power-weight ratio. Although using the same rated power of the motors, different manufacturers provided significantly different amounts of maximum regenerative power. Lighter power load rating of the motors trended to generate higher regenerative braking power reflected by the regenerative power of 138.2-226.9 kW (36.9-60.5%) at high load of 375 kW, 78.5-128.3 kW (41.9-68.4%) at medium load of 187.5 kW and 18.9-31.5 kW (50.4-84.0%) at light load of 37.5kW. Low RPM speed motors trended to generate higher regenerative power than high RPM speed motors, reflected by the generated power of 26.4-226.9 kW for 1,000RPM compared to 18.9-209.2 kW and 17.9-210.7 of 1,500 RPM and 3,000 RPM. The power-weight ratio (kW/kg) lower than approximately 0.08 provided almost linear increasing in of maximum regenerative power proportional to the increasing rate of power-weight ratio. In turn, the regenerative power could be generated exponentially for power-weight ratio became over 0.08 – 0.12 dependent on RPM speed specification and fabrication technology of each manufacturer. These results could be the critical parameters for the optimum design for the electric automotive applications based dual motor drive approach. © 2024 Wydawnictwo SIGMA-NOT. All rights reserved.
Faculty of Engineering, Mahasarakham University, Thailand; Department of Electrical Engineering, Universitas Negeri, Semarang, Indonesia
