Drive System Integrated Magnetic Multiple Spur Gear and High-Speed Motors for Low Floor Light Rail Vehicles

The purpose of this research is to realize a small and lightweight drive system for low floor Light Rail Vehicles (LRVs) by high-speed motor driven. High-speed motor input is limited due to friction in conventional drive systems using mechanical gears. Therefore, we focused on magnetic gears to solve the problem of friction in mechanical gears. However, conventional magnetic gears have problems in terms of efficiency and mechanical strength at high-speed drive. Thus, we propose a small and lightweight drive system integrated Magnetic Multiple Spur Gear and High-speed Motors for low floor LRVs which is suitable for high-speed motor drive. In this paper, the performances of the designed drive system and the proposed method for torque ripple reduction were verified by finite element analysis. From verification, results show that the proposed system and ripple reduction method is highly effective for reducing volume and weight and suppressing ripple.