IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 44, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 1997 39

Axial Flux Machines Drives: A New

Viable Solution for Electric Cars
Francesco Profumo, Senior Member, IEEE, Zheng Zhang, and Alberto Tenconi

Abstract—For electric car propulsion systems, the wheel motor electric motorbike. However, the wound-tape stator, slotless
is an application that requires the electrical machine has shape type, is a strong limitation for traction applications where
flexibility, compactness, robustness, high efficiency, and high the motor is subjected to any type of stresses. In addition,
torque. Axial flux machines are an interesting solution, where the
motor is directly coupled to, or inside, the drive wheels. In this because of the large effective airgap length, the stator windings
paper, axial flux induction and synchronous machines as wheel inductance is very small and the motor has limited capability
motor applications are presented and some considerations for to operate above its “base speed,” in the constant power
each motor type are drawn by the authors. The structure with two speed region. In 1994, Zhang [4] proposed a new axial flux
rotors seems to be a very promising solution for both induction
and synchronous machines. In the induction motor case, the two
interior permanent magnet (AFIPM) machine, in which the
rotors can rotate at different speeds, thus the motor can act as a stator windings are allocated in slots and the whole machine
mechanical differential. The axial flux permanent magnet motor structure seems to be quite robust. The characteristics of this
with two rotors is very compact and can be integrated inside the type of motor are very promising for use in electric vehicles
wheel. (EV’s) application.
Index Terms—Axial flux motor, electric vehicle, induction mo- In addition, in 1992 Platt [5] proposed an axial flux induc-
tor, permanent magnet motor, wheel motor. tion (AFI) motor, directly driving the two wheels without the
differential.
I. INTRODUCTION Electric cars are now becoming a reality and the original
idea of obtaining EV’s by modifying internal combustion

N OWADAYS, different types of traction drives are at-

tempted to be used in electric cars. The traction drives
systems can be classified into two categories in terms of the
engine cars is not viable anymore. Researchers and engineers
are looking for completely new concepts of EV’s with re-
duced components in the driveline to improve the overall
number of the main driving motors: single and multimotor
efficiency and reliability and to reduce weight. At this point,
systems.
AF machines, synchronous and induction, seem to be attractive
In the single-motor system, there is only one electric motor
candidates for electric car wheel motors. Because it is very
connected to the wheels by the reduction gears and the
difficult to identify a unique drive solution for all electric
mechanical differential. The electric motor can be dc or ac
vehicles (city cars, luxury cars, minivans, trucks, etc.), the
and the controller is related to the motor type. The multimotor
authors focused their attention on small electric city cars to
systems are realized with two or more motors and each motor
be used in European cities where the environmental pollution
is directly mounted inside the wheels or directly connected to
problems are quite heavy.
the wheel. With this solution, the mechanical differential, and
even the reduction gear, can be unnecessary. We will call this
solution “wheel motor.” II. ELECTRIC CAR CHARACTERISTICS
The wheel motor is quite new, and in the last few years For small electric cars, a typical set of required performance
some attempts have been proposed. Among the proposed is summarized in Table I. A large constant torque is requested
solutions, the axial flux (AF) motors, synchronous and in- at low speed, from zero to the base speed . Above the base
duction types, seem to be quite attractive. In 1988, Spooner speed, , up to the maximum speed, , a constant power
[1] proposed a toroidally wound-slotless axial flux permanent control is required. The requested wheel torque versus speed is
magnet-brushless dc motor. In 1991, Jensen [2] proposed a shown in Fig. 1, and for the case under study the base speed,
slotless axial flux permanent magnet (AFPM) motor with the , is 500 r/m, the peak torque in the constant torque range is
stator realized by tape-wound amorphous iron. These initial 190 N m and the maximum speed, , is 1500 r/m.
references showed the potentiality of the AFPM machines
and their ability to produce high torque in the low-speed III. AXIAL FLUX MACHINES TYPES
range and to have high-power density and efficiency. In 1994,
Caricchi [3] applied an AFPM motor as a wheel motor to an AF machines have an axially directed airgap flux distribu-
tion. Usually, the stator has a ring structure and the rotor is a
Manuscript received May 7, 1995; revised January 17, 1996. disc, with almost the same active inner and outer diameters.
The authors are with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Industriale,
Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy. The radial length from the stator inner radius to outer radius is
Publisher Item Identifier S 0278-0046(97)00071-3. the motor active part to produce the torque. The axial length
0278–0046/97$10.00  1997 IEEE
40 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 44, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 1997

TABLE I
ELECTRIC CAR CHARACTERISTICS
Top speed (flat road) 120 Km/h
Acceleration (0-50 Km/h) 9 sec.
Curb weight 550 Kg
Payload (3 persons + 40 Kg) 250 Kg
Full load weight 800 Kg
Frontal area 1.5 m2
Aerodynamic drag coeff. 0.35
Wheel rolling radius 0.3 m Fig. 2. AFI motor traction system.
Overspeed factor 1.2

Fig. 1. Wheel torque versus speed characteristic.

Fig. 3. Wheel AFI motor internal structure.

is dependent on the flux density in the stator and the rotor
yokes. Thus, both the stator and the rotor can be fully utilized
with a proper yoke design. For this reason, as the number motor is mounted beside the wheel to obtain one wheel–motor
of poles increases the AF motor radial active part remains unit The solution is depicted in Fig. 2. The wheel AFI motor
unchanged, but the axial length can decrease and the power internal structure is shown in Fig. 3.
density then increases. Hence, AF machines can find their The following considerations can be drawn for this solution:
advantageous applications in low-speed, high-torque electrical
• the wheel AFI motor’s performance is similar to the
drives. In addition, AF machines’ mechanical configuration is
conventional radial flux (RF) motors. The two wheel
well suited to be used as wheel motors.
motors consist of a multimotor system;
AF machines are not limited to the AFI and AFPM motors
• without a reduction gear, the motor speed is low (the
types, but the work presented in this paper is only focused
maximum speed about 1500 r/m), thus, a multipole motor
on these two types of machines. In particular, the following
(8–12 poles) has to be used to obtain high torque density;
AF machines types will be discussed in the following sections
• multipole AFI motors have higher power density than
(the meaning for each acronym will be given in the following
conventional RF motors.
paragraphs):

B. Twin Rotor AFI Motor

The second solution of AFI motors is the machine with
one stator ring core with two polyphase windings on the two
side surfaces and two rotors with two separated shafts which
may rotate independently at different speeds. All of the three
magnetic circuit cores (stator and two rotors) are in the form
of discs with slots to allocate the stator windings and the rotor
IV. AXIAL FLUX INDUCTION (AFI) MACHINES cage. The machine can be classified as a twin-rotor axial flux
motor [5]. The motor has to be mounted between the wheels,
The first family of AF machines presented in this paper is as shown in Fig. 4.
realized by asynchronous structures. The stator core with slots on both radial sides allows two
different windings structures which will result in different flux
A. Wheel AFI Motor distributions.
The wheel AFI motor is realized by a stator,with windings in 1) AFI-NS Motor: Two identical polyphase windings are
slots radially opened and by a cast rotor with radial slots. The connected in series in such a way that the stator current flows
PROFUMO et al.: AXIAL FLUX MACHINES DRIVES: A SOLUTION FOR ELECTRIC CARS 41

Fig. 4. Twin rotor AFI motor drive system.

Fig. 6. Twin rotor AFI-NN motor main flux path.

consequence is that the flux distribution in the two airgaps

changes, while the total linkage flux is maintained constantly.
Thus, the motor can perform as the engine and the mechanical
differential of conventional vehicles.
The following considerations can be drawn for this solution:
• both motors can perform as the engine and the mechanical
differential of conventional vehicles;
• the twin-rotor AFI motors can allow a great saving of
Fig. 5. Twin rotor AFI-NS motor main and leakage fluxes paths.
copper (AFI-NN motor) or iron (AFI-NS motor), hence,
higher power density can be obtained in comparison with
the two-wheel motors system;
in the same direction in each of the two back-to-back stator
• because the motor has to be mounted between the two
slots. There is only one main flux which links the stator
wheels, the motor diameter dimension can result in being
windings and the two rotor cages. No flux goes through the
too large for the car dimension.
stator yoke, except the leakage flux. Fig. 5 is the axial section
at the average radius showing the main and the leakage fluxes.
The two rotors with independent shafts make the machine V. AXIAL FLUX PM (AFPM) MACHINES
able to output different speeds for the two wheels whenever
The second family of AF machines is realized by syn-
the vehicle enters into a curve. In this situation, the two rotors
chronous structures with permanent magnets. The basic layout
have different slips, meaning that they link different fluxes; the
of AFPM machines is realized by two rotor discs rigidly
flux distribution tends to keep the motor torque balanced. Thus,
connected to the machine shaft and one stator placed between
the motor can provide equal torque to the two driving wheels
them [2], [3]. Because the stator has two working surfaces on
performing as the engine and the mechanical differential of
both the radial sides, the active conductors’ length is the sum
conventional vehicles. Only one power supply is needed to of the two radial portions that face the rotors’ magnetic poles.
obtain the differential effect.
These machines have a small stator yoke dimension which
reduces the core cost and the iron losses, but long ends A. AF Surface PM (AFSPM) Motor
windings which result in high copper losses. The first solution in the AFPM machines family is that with
2) AFI-NN Motor: The second windings structure is de- surface permanent magnets slotless-type stator called AFSPM
signed in such a way that the stator current flows in reverse machines. The stator is realized by a tape-wound core (similar
directions in each of the two back-to-back stator slots. The two to a wound transformer) with a polyphase winding. The two
active parts of each coil are mounted in two back-to-back slots. rotors carry axially magnetized permanent magnets which are
This winding arrangement allows a great saving of copper with mounted on the surface of a steel disc turned to the stator
a significant reduction of the stator resistance and the leakage armature. Each rotor is connected to the mechanical shaft. The
reactance because the ends windings length is almost equal to basic configuration is shown in Fig. 7(a), and the axial section
the stator yoke axial length. On the other hand, this solution at the average radius is shown in Fig. 7(b), where the main
needs large stator yoke size. flux paths are also shown
The stator flux in the yoke is divided into two equal The motor characteristics can be summarized as follows.
parts when the vehicle moves in a straight path as shown • Because of the slotless design, the permeance component
in Fig. 6. Whenever the vehicle enters into a curve, the inner of the flux ripple associated with the slots is eliminated,
wheel reduces its speed and increases the slip, whereas the and the tooth saturation, tooth iron losses, and tooth
outer wheel increases the speed and reduces the slip. The vibrations are also eliminated.
42 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 44, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 1997

(a)

(a)

(b)
Fig. 8. AFIPM motor. (a) motor overall structure. (b) Motor axial section.
(b)
Fig. 7. AFSPM motor. (a) Motor overall structure. (b) Motor axial section.
• The effective air gap is small and the motor can be
• There are not slots to fix the stator windings position that designed in such a way that the stator inductances,
are stressed by electromagnetic forces and mechanical and , can satisfy the conditions to deliver the requested
vibrations; the motor structure cannot be robust enough torque in the flux-weakening region, too [7].
for wheel motor. • A saliency is introduced in the machine ( );
• Because of the large effective airgap, the stator winding the result is that the output torque is due to the sum of
inductance is very small and the constant power speed the field and the reluctance effects.
range is limited. In addition, a large magnet quantity is
needed to produce high flux density in the airgap.
VI. POWER ELECTRONIC AND
CONTROL SYSTEM CONSIDERATIONS
B. AF Interior PM (AFIPM) Synchronous Motor
The second solution of AFPM machines is the AFIPM A. Propulsion System Design Issues
synchronous motor. The AFIPM basic structure realized by In EV’s, the throttle position in the conventional internal
one stator and two rotors is shown in Fig. 8(a). The stator combustion engine can be approximately assimilated to a
core is built using a ring structure with slots. The slots on the torque command. The accelerator pedal in electric cars can
two acting surfaces are symmetric and the polyphase windings be considered as the torque command. Thus, for any type
are symmetrically mounted in the slots on each stator surface. of the motors a closed-loop control is required to obtain the
In the rotors, the arc-shaped steel poles and the square magnets requested torque with good dynamic response at the limiting
tangentially magnetized are mounted on a reluctant steel disc. current. In addition, the system efficiency can also be improved
Fig. 8(b) depicts the unfolded axial section and the machine by operating at the optimum flux level. If a precision cruise
flux paths. control is required, an external speed-control loop may be
AFIPM motors have some very attractive characteristics necessary.
for application as wheel motors that can be summarized as Some of the major issues [8] to be considered in designing
follows. the motor controller in an EV propulsion system can be
• The stator windings and the rotor permanent magnets are summarized as follows:
located inside the iron structure; thus, the machine is quite • system efficiency maximization (the best tradeoff between
robust. motor and inverter losses);
PROFUMO et al.: AXIAL FLUX MACHINES DRIVES: A SOLUTION FOR ELECTRIC CARS 43

• motor output torque maximization;

• flux level optimization as function of the requested per-
formance;
• smooth torque control over the entire speed range in
order to avoid the potential excitation of resonance in
the mechanical transmission;
• robustness versus parameters variation;
• dc voltage and current smooth limitation during regener-
ative braking;
• stability over the entire speed range—this aspect must
be carefully considered because in many traction appli-
cations flux weakening is requested (i.e., there is a fixed
reduction gear or direct connection).

B. AF Machines Drive System

In principle, to match the issues drawn in the previous
paragraph, the power supply and the controller for AF motor
drives are similar to those used in conventional propulsion
systems with RF motors. Fig. 9. AFI motor overall control system.
In addition, AF machines are attractive for electric cars
because the traditional mechanical transmission composed of
the reduction gear box (with or without gear shafting) and D. AFPM Motor Control
the differential gears can be unnecessary. In many cases, the Also, in the case of AFPM motors, the power supply is
wheels are directly driven by the proper motors (integrated realized by a PWM inverter that converts the fixed battery
inside wheels or not) without any speed reduction. In other voltage into variable-voltage variable-frequency supply.
cases, to decrease the motor volume the reduction gear is The torque control in the constant torque region can be
integrated in the wheel motor. obtained by the technique that was presented in [11] and [12]
In a multimotor drive system, one or more inverters are for both AFSPM and AFIPM. In the constant power region,
needed as power amplifiers, and the controller has more tasks the key problem is how to weaken the flux produced by the
to perform. In particular, it has to act as a differential; during magnets to get a wide constant power speed range without the
steering maneuvers, the inner wheel speed is lower than the oversize inverter.
outer wheel speed but the torque must be the same. The tractive This problem cannot be solved for AFSPM’s that are not
and braking effort must be balanced in the two sides of the suitable to all the applications when a wide constant power
vehicle. Hence, a supervisor unit must coordinate the different range is required [15], [16].
control systems to avoid unbalanced torques to wheels. This In the case of AFIPM, the stator current can be controlled
consideration adds a strong reason to control the motor torque to weaken the PM flux. For this purpose, it is necessary that
rather than the motor speed. the stator armature field is able to effectively affect the rotor
In a single-motor system with twin rotor AFI motors, the PM field and large stator windings inductances are needed.
motor consists of a single stator with two independent rotors This method allows a flux-weakening range of over 3:1 [7].
connected to the driven wheels. Although only one inverter is The AFIPM motor overall flux-weakening control system is
needed, the system has to behave as a differential to keep the shown in Fig. 10.
torque almost equal to the two wheels even during steering
maneuvers. VII. AXIAL FLUX AND RADIAL FLUX MACHINES COMPARISON
An interesting issue is the AF and RF machines comparison
C. AFI Motor Control in terms of power density. Because of the structure differences
Similar to three-phase RF induction motor control, the in the case of PM machines, the permanent magnet quantity
pulsewidth modulation (PWM) inverter converts the fixed can be very different for the two cases and the power density
battery voltage to three-phase variable frequency and variable comparison seems to be difficult at this stage. On the other
voltage supply. hand, for induction motors the comparison is available, and it
The torque control is achieved by field oriented (FO) will be presented in the next section.
technique that allows the control of the torque in steady
state and in transient conditions [9], [10]. The flux-weakening A. Induction Motors Power Density Comparison
operation, when the maximum voltage is reached, is achieved The power density comparison for AFI motors and conven-
by controlling the flux current component. The overall control tional RF induction (RFI) motors can be performed in terms
scheme is shown in Fig. 9. of the rated power/weight (volume) ratio. For the purpose
44 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 44, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 1997

Fig. 11. Power density ratio for AFI and RFI motors as the function of the
pole-pair number.
Fig. 10. AFIPM motor overall flux-weakening control system.

AFIPM motors seem to be the best solution in terms of

of comparison, the well-known sizing equation can be used suitable shape, compactness, robustness, and electric charac-
and it can be assumed that the two types of machines have teristics.
roughly the same performance. If we define the power density Finally, twin-rotor motor structures (induction and syn-
as follows: chronous) allow the saving of copper or iron. Thus, the
machines can have higher power density and efficiency in
Motor rated power W comparison with two individual motors.
(1)
Motor core volume m
and for small and middle size machines, the power density
REFERENCES
ratio between the two types of motors can be expressed by
[1] E. Spooner and B. J. Chalmers, “Toroidally-wound, slotless, axial flux,
permanent magnet, brushless-DC motor,” in Conf. Rec. ICEM-88, Pisa,
Italy, 1988, pp. 81–86.
[2] C. C. Jensen, F. Profumo, and T. A. Lipo, “A low loss permanent magnet
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construction of a wheel directly coupled axial flux PM prototype for
EV’s,” in Conf. Rec. IEEE-IAS ’94, Denver, CO, 1994, vol. 1, pp.
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[6] Z. Zhang, F. Profumo, and A. Tenconi, “Wheels axial flux machines
pairs increases, the machine power density ratio, , increases for electric vehicle applications,” in Conf. Rec. ICEM-94, Paris, France,
rapidly. As a consequence, for multipole machines application, 1994, vol. 2, pp. 7–12.
AFI motors have larger power density in comparison with RFI [7] Z. Zhang, F. Profumo, and A. Tenconi, “Axial flux interior PM syn-
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motors. Conf. Rec. IPEC-95, Yokohama, Japan, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 813–818.
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production radius and the rotor core material is fully utilized. applications,” in Conf. Rec. IPEC-95, Yokohama, Japan, 1995, vol. 1,
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[10] T. G. Habetler, F. Profumo, M. Pastorelli, and L. Tolbert, “Direct torque
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[14] E. Spooner and B. J. Chalmers, “TORUS, a slotless, toroidal stator, Zheng Zhang was born in Beijing, China, in 1960.
permanent magnet generator,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol. 139, pt. B, He received the B.S.E.E. degree from Hefei Uni-
pp. 497–506, Nov. 1992. versity of Technology, Hefei, China, in 1982, and
[15] R. F. Schiferl and T. A. Lipo, “Power capability of salient pole perma- the M.S.E.E. degree from Chongching University,
nent magnet synchronous motors in variable speed drive applications,” Chongching, China, in 1985, both in electrical en-
IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol. 26, pp. 115–123, Jan./Feb. 1990. gineering.
[16] W. L. Soong and T. J. E. Miller, “Field-weakening performance of From 1985 to 1993, he taught several courses and
brushless synchronous AC motor drives,” Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol. conducted research as a Lecturer in the Automation
141, pp. 331–340, Nov. 1994. Department, Shandong University of Technology,
Jinan, China. He was a Visiting Scholar in 1993 and
is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Italy. He is a research stayer
at the FIAT Research Center, Torino, Italy. His research interests include the
Francesco Profumo (M’88–SM’90) was born in development of new types of electrical machines and drive systems. He has
Savona, Italy, in 1953. He received the “laurea” published more than ten papers on these topics.
(with honors) in electrical engineering from the
Politecnico di Torino, Italy, in 1977.
From 1978 to 1984, he worked as a Research
and Development Senior Engineer for the Ansaldo
Group, Genoa, Italy. He was then with the De-
partment of Electrical Engineering, Politecnico di Alberto Tenconi was born in Gallarate, Italy, in
Torino, Italy, until October 1995. Since November 1961. He received the M.Sc. degree in 1986, and the
1995, he has been Professor of Electrical Drives, Ph.D. degree in 1990, both in electrical engineering,
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy.
Bologna, Italy. He was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Electrical and From 1988 to 1993, he was with the Electronic
Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1986–1988. He Systems Division, FIAT Research Center, Torino,
has published more than 110 technical papers, won an IEEE-IAS second prize Italy, where he engaged in the development of
paper in 1991 and an IEEE-IAS first prize paper in 1992. His fields of interest electrical vehicle drive systems. He then joined the
are power electronics conversion, integrated electronic/electromechanical de- Department of Electrical Engineering, Politecnico
sign, high response speed servo drives, and applications of new power devices. di Torino, Italy, where he is currently an Assistant
Dr. Profumo is an active member of the IEEE-IAS Drives Committee and Professor in the area of electric drives. His fields
Secretary of the IEEE-PELS/IES Italian Chapter. He was the Secretariat of the of interest are high performance drives design, new power electronic devices
EPE 1991 Conference held in Florence, Italy. He is a Registered Professional applications, and nonconventional electric machines development.
Engineer in Italy. Dr. Tenconi is a Registered Professional Engineer in Italy.