Optimisation of Permanent Magnet Machine Topologies Suitable for Solar Powered Aircraft

Electrification of aircraft has become a hot topic in recent years both in civil aviation and unmanned aerial vehicles. The latter domain is gaining in popularity for its high altitude applications, particularly for bringing widespread internet coverage. This paper presents the work done on the optimisation of different types and topologies of permanent magnet electrical machines that can be considered as the main contenders for such application. These topologies consist of both laminated steel core and airgap winding machines. Instead of copper, compressed aluminium windings were considered which will help in reducing the overall mass of the stator. All the topologies were simulated both under take-off and cruise condition. Each machine had to fulfil a certain thermal constraint (current density) before being simulated at cruise condition in order to find the objective function of the final design. The best topology was chosen based on high efficiency in cruise condition with reduced mass.