BMBF joint project NeWwire

The biggest challenge facing the automotive industry worldwide is to ensure environmentally friendly individual mobility in the long term. With regard to the targeted use of renewable energies and zero local emissions, great expectations are placed on electromobility. From the perspective of the automotive industry, it is important to maintain Germany's leading role in automotive engineering in an "electromobile future". The German government has therefore set itself the goal of putting one million electric vehicles on Germany's roads by 2020 as a first step. The German automotive industry is to become a leading provider of electromobility. However, there are still significant technological hurdles to overcome on the way to marketable electric vehicles. As part of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research's funding priority "Series-flexible technologies for electric drives in vehicles 2", funding is being provided in particular for series-capable and scalable production and manufacturing technologies for the production of electric motors and measurement and testing technologies. In addition, drive technologies for future vehicle generations, which place significantly more stringent requirements on the performance and functional safety of electric motors, are being funded.

Due to limited energy resources and the global growth in private transportation, new energy-efficient and economical drive concepts are needed. Electric drives currently offer precisely these technical properties due to their high efficiency. In order to take advantage of these benefits, the electric motor must be optimally designed for its application. Today's electric motors for traction drives must be optimized to their performance and material limits and meet a wide range of requirements.

The aim of the NeWwire research project is to develop and design a new type of winding process for the automated production of high-performance electric motors for automotive applications. The inner copper wire winding in the stationary part of the motor. To increase the performance of the motor, a high-performance winding is required, the production of which represents a particular challenge. The so-called trickle winding process, in which the wires have so far been inserted into the stator by hand, is to be automated in the project. As many copper conductors as possible are inserted into the stator in a reproducible manner and with short production times, without damaging the enameled copper wire and causing electrical short circuits. Although today's automated winding processes achieve short production times and reproducible results, the number of copper conductors is not as high as with manual processes.

From manual process to plant integration.
Source: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, wbk Institute of Production Engineering, Volkswagen AG

First, the requirements and specifications, such as power and torque, are defined for the traction drive. The motor is designed electromagnetically and thermally in an iterative process. At the same time, the concept for the mechanization and automation of the Träufel winding process is developed and prototypically tested. The knowledge gained in the process is incorporated into the simulation of the drive system for the construction of the demonstrator. Successful implementation also requires the further development of the copper wire with its insulation and coating. The demonstrator will be implemented and tested in the production process at Volkswagen. At the end of the project, several prototypes of the electric motor will be manufactured and tested under different conditions with regard to their performance characteristics.

The automation of the innovative winding process offers the possibility of increasing the number of copper conductors in stators of different types of electric motors. This makes electric motors more efficient and more powerful. All manufacturers of electric motors, including high-performance industrial motors in logistics processes, for example, can benefit from the research results.

01.01.2017 - 31.12.2019

• Volkswagen AG, Kassel plant, Baunatal (project coordinator)
• Aumann GmbH , Espelkamp
• Essex Germany GmbH, Bad Arolsen
• University of Kassel, Department of Vehicle Systems and Fundamentals (FSG), Kassel
• University of Kassel, Department of Mechatronics with a focus on (FMF), Kassel
• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, wbk Institute for Production Engineering, Karlsruhe

Federal Ministry
for Education
and Research