Sensitivity analysis on tolerance induced torque fluctuation of a synchronous machine

The manufacturing process of electrical machines influences the geometric dimensions and material properties, e.g. the yoke thickness. These influences occur by statistical variation as manufacturing tolerances. The effect of these tolerances and their potential impact on the mechanical torque output is not fully studied up to now. This paper conducts a sensitivity analysis for geometric and material parameters. For the general approach these parameters are varied uniformly in a range of 10 %. Two dimensional finite element analysis is used to simulate the influences at three characteristic operating points. The studied object is an internal permanent magnet machine in the 100 kW range used for hybrid drive applications. The results show a significant dependency on the rotational speed. The general validity is studied by using boundary condition variations and two further machine designs. This procedure offers the comparison of matching qualitative results for small quantitative deviations. For detecting the impact of the manufacturing process realistic tolerance ranges are used. This investigation identifies the airgap and magnet remanence induction as the main parameters for potential torque fluctuation.