Speaker
Kiruba Haran
(University of Illinois)
Description
Several groups have worked to develop many different types of superconducting (SC) machines, successfully demonstrating different aspects of the technology. In spite of these efforts, commercial adoption has not taken place because of the perceived unfavorable risk/benefit assessment of SC technology. In this talk, we will describe efforts to try and break this impasse by leveraging advances in the commercially successful MRI industry to further increase machine power density while reducing many of the risks with mature technology. High power density is obtained with increased air-gap flux density and an 'air-core' machine architecture. Technical risks related to the high field SC coils, the cryogenic cooling system, the mechanical suspension system and torque transfer mechanism, air-gap armature winding, protection, etc. need to be overcome to make this practical. A NASA funded project is starting to evaluate the value of this approach for future electric aircraft applications. A status update on this project, and extrapolation to other applications like wind turbine generators will be provided.
Primary author
Kiruba Haran
(University of Illinois)
