Megawatt electrical motor designed by MIT engineers could help electrify aviation

June 9, 2023
Technology demonstrations show the machine’s major components achieve the required performance, Jennifer Chu reports for MIT News.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., - Aviation’s huge carbon footprint could shrink significantly with electrification. To date, however, only small all-electric planes have gotten off the ground. Their electric motors generate hundreds of kilowatts of power. To electrify larger, heavier jets, such as commercial airliners, megawatt-scale motors are required. These would be propelled by hybrid or turbo-electric propulsion systems where an electrical machine is coupled with a gas turbine aero-engine, Jennifer Chu reports for MIT NewsContinue reading original article.

The Military & Aerospace Electronics take:

Date goes Here - Chu notes that the MIT team is composed of faculty, students, and research staff from GTL and the MIT Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems: Henry Andersen Yuankang Chen, Zachary Cordero, David Cuadrado, Edward Greitzer, Charlotte Gump, James Kirtley, Jr., Jeffrey Lang, David Otten, David Perreault, and Mohammad Qasim, along with Marc Amato of Innova-Logic LLC. The project is sponsored by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI).

Chu says "the MIT electric motor and power electronics are each about the size of a checked suitcase weighing less than an adult passenger."

In addition, Chu writes that "the motor’s main components are: a high-speed rotor, lined with an array of magnets with varying orientation of polarity; a compact low-loss stator that fits inside the rotor and contains an intricate array of copper windings; an advanced heat exchanger that keeps the components cool while transmitting the torque of the machine; and a distributed power electronics system, made from 30 custom-built circuit boards, that precisely change the currents running through each of the stator’s copper windings, at high frequency."

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Jamie Whitney, Senior Editor
Military + Aerospace Electronics

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