Grainger CEME

Center for Electric Machinery and Electromechanics

Research Projects

Motor Design, Operation, and Control

Motor design today can be performed at the system level, taking into account particular operating requirements and control opportunities. At the CEME, we seek answers to fundamental questions about the best use of materials, opportunities for new control concepts, and innovations in manufacturing. Improved steels, permanent magnets, insulation materials, modeling and simulation, and control methods are at the heart of revolutionary changes in electric machinery. Motors designed to operate specifically with electronic controls are leading to new possibilities. We are developing ways to make motors more efficient, more powerful, smaller, easier to build, and well matched to their applications. We plan to develop tools for designers that support these developments.

 

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Automotive and Advanced Applications

Applications of motors are expanding rapidly. A typical automobile built today has more than one hundred electric motors, plus many electromechanical sensors and actuators. At high power levels, motors drive electric and hybrid cars. The CEME supports projects that expand the usefulness of electric machines and electromechanical devices, and seeks to promote new ideas for high-performance applications.

 

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Renewable Energy

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Large Student Team Design Projects

Multidisciplinary team projects are the way engineering gets done in real life. The CEME provides opportunities and seed funding for students at work on large projects in energy and electromechanics areas. Undergraduate students in the College of Engineering are able to make large team projects a part of their curriculum. The Center is a sponsor of the international Future Energy Challenge, a major student competition organized by the IEEE. Through the Challenge program, we seek to encourage student innovation and educational excellence around the world.

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Curriculum and Laboratory Development

Laboratory and classroom-based education in electric machinery and electromechanics is one of the primary missions of the CEME. The Center builds on a history of leadership at the University of Illinois, with outstanding facilities and opportunities for hands-on projects. New concepts such as a flexible open-frame linear machine, adaptable benches that support direct experiments with almost any type of motor, and undergraduate laboratories in power electronics have been developed by the Center and its antecedents. Today, we are creating broad courses related to system and device design, as well as specialized hardware for lab work in all our areas of interest.

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Advanced Research Projects

Advances in the design and application of electric machinery will require innovation in control of electromechanical devices, modeling techniques, computer-aided design tools, energy processing systems and methods, and dispersed systems. The CEME supports basic research and the development of new ideas in topic areas most likely to impact the design and use of machines. Tools, such as dynamic visualization of the magnetic fields in a rotating machine, are also supported. The objective is to build a fundamental base for advances across all areas of electromechanics.


past projects