Electromagnetic/thermal design procedure of an aerospace electric propeller

Much attention is focused upon the integration of electric actuators in aerospace applications to accomplish many functions, including the propulsion one. Within this trend, the paper is aimed at the design, modeling and optimization of a five phase fractional-slot PM synchronous motor to be integrated in an electrically-propelled plane. Accounting for the fact that the design procedure concerns both electromagnetic and thermal features, an analytical formulation of the corresponding major design parameters is derived. Then, an electromagnetic/thermal FEA-based investigation of the initial concept has led to an average temperature rise lower than the aerospace application limit one. An optimization of the initial design is achieved using a FEA-based iterative procedure thar yields a 22.5% decrease of the stack length resulting in a weight reduction of 22.6%.