A laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University recently was awarded a grant from the Electric Motor Education and Research Foundation (EMERF) a 501 (c)(3) organization and the foundation of SMMA - The Motor and Motion Association (SMMA).
EMERF formed a pre-competitive research group of SMMA member companies to review and provide input regarding potential research topics that were of interest and value to the small motor manufacturing industry. "Achieving Improvements in Power Density while Simultaneously Increasing Efficiency in Small Electric Motors" was identified as the research topic. The goal of this effort is to provide a new small motor technology that meets the technical targets defined in the solicitation. The seed award in this round is expected to be the start of a program that will take this new technology to market.
Texas A&M University's Electric Machines and Power Electronic (EMPE) Laboratory, under the leadership of Dr. Hamid A. Toliyat, the Raytheon Company Professor in the department, won the grant. His project, "Design of Ferrite Assisted Synchronous Reluctance Motor (Fa-SynRM) with Aluminum Conductors in Stator" is expected to start in January 2014 and last six months.
Toliyat came to Texas A&M in 1994 after being an assistant professor at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991.
He is an IEEE Fellow and has received the prestigious Cyrill Veinott Award in Electromechanical Energy Conversion from the IEEE Power Engineering Society in 2004; Patent and Innovation Award from The Texas A&M University System Office of Technology Commercialization in 2007; the TEES Fellow Award in 2004 and 2006; Outstanding Professor Award in 2005 from Texas A&M; Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003; E.D. Brockett Professorship Award in 2002; Eugene Webb Faculty Fellow Award in 2000; and the Texas A&M Select Young Investigator Award in 1999 from Texas A&M University.
He has also received the Space Act Award from NASA in 1999 and the Schlumberger Foundation Technical Awards in 2001 and 2000. Toliyat was an editor of IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics. He also was the chair of IEEE-IAS Industrial Power Conversion Systems Department of IEEE-IAS and is a member of Sigma Xi.
His main research interests and experience include analysis and design of electrical machines, variable speed drives for traction and propulsion applications, fault diagnosis of electric machinery and sensorless variable speed drives. Toliyat has supervised more than 50 graduate students, published more than 370 technical papers (more than 110 of which are in IEEE Transactions) and has presented more than 80 invited lectures all over the world. Toliyat also is an inventor and has 12 issued and pending U.S. patents in these fields.
He is the author of DSP-Based Electromechanical Motion Control (CRC Press, 2003), the co-editor of Handbook of Electric Motors, 2nd Editio (Marcel Dekker, 2004) and the co-author of Electric Machines: Modeling, Condition Monitoring and Fault Diagnosis (CRC Press, 2012). He was the general chair of the 2005 IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference in San Antonio and is a professional engineer in the State of Texas.
EMERF will issue periodic communications on the project, and will also present an update at the SMMA 2014 Spring Management Conference in Fort Myers, Florida. For additional information about the project, EMERF or SMMA, contact Betsy Chambers at info@smma.org or 508.979.5935 or visit the website, www.smma.org.
SMMA - The Motor & Motion Association is a manufacturing trade association, founded in 1975, comprised of motor and drive manufacturers and their suppliers. EMERF, the Electric Motor Education & Research Foundation, a 501(c)(3) chartered in 1995, promotes the electric motor industry through education, pre-competitive research and facilitation of technology transfer within the industry and in cooperation with academic, private research and governmental organizations.