Quantification of Drive Cycles for Evaluating Motor Efficiency

Due to the goals made by the European Union as well as the country of Sweden regarding the desired decrease of the ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, electrical alternatives have increased enormously in the industry and the automotive areas in recent years. By going from petrol-powered vehicles to electrical vehicles, the transport sector has the potential to produce zero direct emissions. To be able to develop electrical vehicles with the highest efficiency possible, it is of great importance to understand what losses occurs in the vehicle. By lowering these losses, we create a vehicle which both become cheaper and better for the climate. The aim of his thesis is to study the performance of the motors with different combinations of angular velocity and torque, analyse what losses occur with the combinations and also how the result is affected by the resolution of the drive cycles. Produced drive cycles, with a purpose to represent the velocity and acceleration of a vehicle in a realistic way, was used during the study to obtain a drive pattern. MATLAB was used during the whole thesis for analysis, simulation and plotting. Firstly, a method to obtain the probability of certain combinations of torques and angular velocities for a specific drive cycle was created. With this probability, a method to be able to adjust and choose the resolution of the torques and angular velocities was created. It was later concluded that these two methods functioned as desired. With the obtained combinations, the mechanical power as well as the most common losses in the electrical motor could be calculated. With this, an efficiency could be calculated and analysed. The energy demand of the different combinations was also obtained. One conclusion that could be made with this thesis was that the average efficiency did not depend on the resolution of the torque and angular velocity much at all. With a resolution going from 0.5 Nm to 20 Nm, the average efficiency only changed by below 0.3 percent units. At the end of the thesis, a continued work is proposed to implement different magnetic properties that are not accounted for in this thesis. Another suggestion made is to include scenarios where the battery is charged when a negative torque is applied to the motor shaft.