Organizer: Fang Deng, Whirlpool Corporation

Abstract:

This session provides a comprehensive example of engaging critical technical scopes and competencies in the design process of a power electronics and/or motor drives system. This example collected from five individual research cases ranging from the concept approval to product development phase provides the methodology and standardization for the advanced product design.  Approaches via optimization and trade-off analysis of a such system to well balance between performance, reliability, safety and cost are demonstrated in this session. In addition, knowledge and insights in critical performance assessment such as NVH quality provides a specific perspective in design direction and focus, hence leading to practical solutions confined with the overall design targets. In particular, as modern electrification advances the power electronics with fast switching capability is favorable for high controllability, however imposes challenges to retain the motor insulation capability. Rendering solutions to overcome those challenges, system level design strategy is explored and demonstrated in this session, showcasing that the in-depth knowledge, expertise and system view all have played significance in outputting a power electronics motor drives system design achieving most performance benefits with high feasibility and practicality.

 Short Bio of Organizer:

Fang Deng (IEEE SM) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, in 1994. From 1994 to 2008, she was with General Motors & Delphi Automotive in Michigan as a Senior Engineer and Staff Engineer, where she participated and led in research and development of PMSM motor-drive systems for electrical propulsion and various automotive accessory motors & actuators. From 2010 to 2013, she was a Chief Engineer and Engineering Director at Danotek Motion Co. in Michigan leading the development of PMSM generators ranging from 660KW to 3.0MW and 140rpm to 1735rpm for the global wind power market.  From 2014 Dr. Deng is with Whirlpool Corporation at Benton Harbor Michigan. She is currently holding the position of Fellow & Senior Director for Motor Drives Technology at Whirlpool. Dr. Deng’s current role is to bring state-of-the-art motor drives technology to production in the core consumer appliance space and achieve product leadership via the outstanding drives technology’ implementation.  In addition, she sits as the chairperson in Tech Board – Motor Drives to help build and retain Whirlpool’s core competency and skill set that is ranked the world class level in the appliance industry.

In academic space, Dr. Deng’s contributions to the archival literature in the area of PM motor drives is highly significant. Her publications in deriving analytical methods to rigorously segregate and compute various permanent magnet (PM) AC motor’s magnet losses and other core losses show twenty-one years of sustained and significant contributions. She was invited to participate in various academic conferences in the form of keynote speaker and plenary speaker on subjects of PMSM drives.

In industry, Dr. Deng has more than 25 years of successful research and engineering experience (with multiple patents and trade secrets generated) in PM motor design, relating motor control algorithms and production success. She has delivered advanced PM motor drive technologies to a variety of industry applications and demonstrated exceptionally strong expertise in PM motor design and control with optimized, effective and practical designs and insights.

Speakers and presentations:

1. Ian P. Brown, Associate Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA
   Design and Optimization of High Performance Synchronous Machines

2. Rakib Islam, Senior motor engineering specialist, Dura Automotive Systems, Auburn Hills, MI, USA
   Standard practices in electric machine designs to address NVH issues in regards to a mass production environment

3. Behrooz Mirafzal, Associate Professor, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
   High-Frequency over Voltage Transients in Motor Drive Systems

4. Rashmi Prasad, Senior Researcher, Electric Drives and Power Electronics Systems Group, GM Global R&D Center, Warren, MI, USA
   Traction Inverter Development for Electrified Vehicles

5. Jiangbiao He, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kentucky, USA.
   Dv/dt Filters for WBG Variable-Frequency Drives