Electric Motor Education and Research Foundation

The Electric Motor Education and Research Foundation, or EMERF, is a non-profit foundation affiliated with SMMA – the Motor and Motion Association, a United States based electric motor trade association. EMERF was chartered in 1995 to advance and promote 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. EMERF is governed by an active Board of Directors that develops research and educational programs based on input from SMMA members and others involved with electric motors. The office of the foundation is in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA.

Research Programs

The primary research program at EMERF is the Lamination Steels Research Project. This project began in 1997 and is charged with developing a set of updated information on electrical steel and other alloys commonly used in the laminated cores of electric motors, generators and other types of electrical rotating machinery. Special emphasis is placed on collecting and developing new information on the performance of these steels under non-sinusoidal excitation, at high excitation or switching frequencies, and at high induction levels

The Lamination Steels Research Project currently follows two avenues of research:

1. Phase I. A compilation of existing material property data developed by contacting steel manufacturers to be used as a baseline of information for the original research program of Phase II.

2. Phase II. A program of original research constituted as the EMERF Research Consortium on Losses in Lamination Steels. This consortium is made up of select SMMA member companies and is funded by the consortium members as well as by a grant from the United States Department of Energy. Dr. Pragasen Pillay, Jean Newell Distinguished Professor in Engineering at Clarkson University, is Principal Investigator of the Consortium and directs the research activities using the facilities of Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. Under Dr. Pillay’s direction, the Consortium is striving to understand the mechanisms involved in core losses in lamination steels at high frequencies, high induction levels and under non-sinusoidal excitation, and is developing new algorithmic expressions for accurately predicting core losses under these contemporary conditions as well as creating new test methodologies to confirm these predictions.

See also

*Core loss
*Eddy current
*Hysteresis
*Magnetization
*Electrical steel
*Silicon steel
*Steel
*Magnetic core
*Electric motor
*Generator

Further reading

Works containing citations to the Lamination Steels CD-ROMs

Deshpande, Uday. 2003. Recent advances in materials for use in permanent magnet machines – a review. The Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference. CD-ROM. New York: IEEE.

Nasar, Syed A., and Ion Boldea. 2001. The induction machine handbook. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press.

On the work of the EMERF Research Consortium on Losses in Lamination Steels

Mthombeni, Tsakani Lotten. 2006. Improved core loss measurements and calculations. PhD dissertation, Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York.

Mthombeni T.L., and P. Pillay. 2006. A new Epstein frame for core loss measurements at high frequencies and high flux densities. "IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion" (forthcoming).

Mthombeni, T.L., and P. Pillay. 2006. Review of lamination loss models. "Proceedings of the South African Universities Power Engineering Conference (SAUPEC)", University of Natal, Durban, South Africa.

Mthombeni, T.L., and P. Pillay. 2005. Lamination core losses in motors with non-sinusoidal excitation with particular reference to PWM and SRM excitation waveforms. "IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion" 20, no. 4 (December): 836–843.

Mthombeni, T.L., and P. Pillay. 2004. Core losses in motor laminations exposed to high frequency or non-sinusoidal excitation. "IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications" 40, no. 5 (September–October): 1325–1332.

Pillay, Pragasen. 2007. Status of the SMMA/EMERF research consortium on losses in lamination steels. "The Proceedings of the 2007 SMMA Fall Technical Conference". South Dartmouth, Massachusetts: SMMA. CD-ROM.

Roth, Timothy. 2006. Temperature effects on core loss and permeability of non-oriented soft magnetic materials under high frequency sinusoidal excitations. Student Paper Award of the IEEE Power Engineering Society 2006 General Meeting, Montréal.

External links

* [http://www.smma.org/emerf.html EMERF, The Electric Motor Education and Research Foundation]
* [http://people.clarkson.edu/~pillayp/losses.htm The EMERF Research Consortium on Losses in Lamination Steels]