Experimental Investigation of a Slotless Skewed Stator with a Composite Winding Layer

Ambitious power density targets for future electric propulsion systems in air transport necessitate the development of novel electrical machine topologies. The slotless permanent magnet machine presents a substantial weight reduction and opportunity to exploit high performance materials. However, a limiting feature of slotless machines is the exposure of the stator winding layer to the rotor reaction torque which would normally be borne by the stator teeth. To address this issue, a glass-fibre composite air-gap winding is developed, to investigate the mechanical and thermal performance of various composite winding configurations and to demonstrate a viable manufacturing procedure for this unconventional topology. Due to the complexity of the winding amalgam, the proposed multiphysics experiments involve reduced-scale representative samples with the aim of developing a resource efficient design methodology for this system.