Work

Novel Alloy Designed Electrical Steel for Improved Performance in High-Frequency Electric Machines

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: The increase in electrification and desire for greater electrical motor efficiencies under a range of operating conditions for different products (e.g. household appliances, automotive and aerospace) is driving innovative motor designs and demands for higher performing electrical steels. Improvements in the magnetic, electrical and/or mechanical properties of electrical steels is required for high volume electrical motors and recent advances include steels with increased Si content (from <3.5wt% Si up to 6.5wt%). Whilst the 6.5wt% Si steels give increased motor performance at high frequencies the formation of a brittle BCC B2/D03 phase means that they cannot be cold rolled and therefore the production route involves siliconisation after the required thickness strip is produced. The advances in computationally driven alloy design, coupled with physical metallurgical understanding, allows more adventurous alloy design for electrical steels, outside the traditional predominantly Fe-Si compositional space. A new family of alloys, based on low cost commonly used steel alloying elements, has been developed to give improvements compared to current ≈3wt% Si grades in magnetic performance (>25% magnetic loss reduction at > 1kHz) as well as tensile strength (>33% increase in tensile strength with similar elongation value) whilst also maintaining processability to allow full scale commercial production using traditional continuous casting, hot and cold rolling and annealing. The paper reports on the alloy design approach used, microstructures and the mechanical, electrical and magnetic properties of the developed novel electrical steels compared to conventional ≈3wt% Si and 6.5wt% Si material.

Source: Metals

DOI: 10.3390/met15101066

Authors: Carl Slater, Xiyun Ma, Gwendal Lagorce, Soulard Juliette, Claire Davis

Institution: University of Warwick

Language: English

Topic: Magnetic Properties and Applications

Subfield: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

Field: Materials Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,137