Electrical Machines for High-Speed Applications: Design Considerations and Tradeoffs

The high-speed (HS) electric machines are gaining attention in several different applications, and the development of advanced materials, electronic components, and control algorithms is pushing ahead the technological speed limits. In the electromagnetic sizing of HS machines, the mechanical and thermal involvements are very tight to make it necessary to deal with all the different aspects at the same time. This paper aims to summarize and discuss the electrical and the mechanical aspects involved in the HS machine design, highlighting the main issues and the tradeoffs that the designer has to consider. Furthermore, the correlation between volume reduction and speed increase, based on commercial high-frequency rotor-stator units, is also presented.