Multidisciplinary Design Automation of Electric Motors—Systematic Literature Review and Methodological Framework

Abstract

Electric motor development is a challenging task, as higher efficiency requirements and various interdependencies between different engineering domains must be considered. Established design approaches often lack the ability to address these interdependencies because they focus on specific domains and properties. Automated, multidisciplinary design approaches hold untapped potential for optimizing motors in terms of diverse requirements and advancing the development of more efficient and reliable motors. This paper presents a systematic literature review of the current state of research in the multidisciplinary design automation of electric motors. The literature basis comprises 1005 publications that are identified by a systematic internet search. The review of the existing approaches is based on twelve criteria that characterize the design automation task in general, such as knowledge representation or reasoning methods used, as well as criteria specific to electric motor design, such as domains considered and their coupling. The analysis reveals what current approaches are lacking: Consequent analysis and integration of domains, applicability of suggested methods, incorporation of established multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) architectures, alongside the consideration of passive components in the motor. Aside from the introduction of twelve criteria for systematic charaterization of multidisciplinary design automation of electric motors, this article expands the state of the art by proposing an initial framework to establish process chains tackling the identified gaps in the review.

Enhancing design automation for components of electric machines: a systematic approach

“…Component design in this work refers to MDDA processes where singular components are designed in detail, in contrast to system design, where the main parameters of all relevant components of the system are designed at once. Both can be found in the literature of MDDA for electric machines (Umland et al, 2023). Farhan et al (2020) poses an example for system design in the scope of a MDDA by designing the active parts, i.e.…”

“…Thus, both system-centric and component-centric design approaches are constrained by their inherent limitations. Although some authors, such as Dai et al (2019), adopt strategies that consider both component and system design aspects, the review by Umland et al (2023) highlights that multilevel approaches are often overlooked in electric motor design, thus missing opportunities for parallel optimization processes and indicating a need for further methodological support.…”

“…However, a recent review has revealed that despite its growing popularity, systematic approaches to set up MDDA processes for electric motor engineering are lacking. (Umland et al, 2023) Furthermore, existing MDDA applications often are limited to very specific cases, like high-speed motors or they integrate all knowledge into geometric models or hard coded procedural rules. This hinders the transfer of these approaches to other applications or motor designs (Umland et al, 2023).…”

“…(Umland et al, 2023) Furthermore, existing MDDA applications often are limited to very specific cases, like high-speed motors or they integrate all knowledge into geometric models or hard coded procedural rules. This hinders the transfer of these approaches to other applications or motor designs (Umland et al, 2023). The same review also underscores the absence of strategies that integrate the various architectural levels of electric motor engineering, particularly the interaction between system-level and component-level design (Umland et al, 2023).…”

“…This hinders the transfer of these approaches to other applications or motor designs (Umland et al, 2023). The same review also underscores the absence of strategies that integrate the various architectural levels of electric motor engineering, particularly the interaction between system-level and component-level design (Umland et al, 2023). Moreover, it is common for design automation to be set up by engineers who, while experienced in application-specific domains, may lack formal training in software engineering, which suggests a potential gap in expertise that could benefit from additional support (Vidner et al, 2022).…”