Preliminary considerations about the adoption of unconventional magnetic materials and structures for induction motors

The utilization of high-quality magnetic materials, such as amorphous, microcrystalline or cubic texture materials, for designing the magnetic structure of medium size induction motors has been investigated. To evaluate their benefits of reducing iron losses in AC motors, some computer computations have been carried out considering the characteristic of such materials (induction versus specific losses) and the results for different solutions have been compared. To verify the theoretical results the authors obtained a prototype 20 hp, 380 V, three phase induction motor using nonconventional magnetic material has been designed and built. The measurements carried out on the prototype to evaluate the iron losses confirm the computation results.<>