Toward Less Rare-Earth Permanent Magnet in Electric Machines: A Review

Many electric traction drive systems (ETDSs) are driven by electric motors primarily composed of high-energy rare-earth (RE) permanent magnets (PMs), such as neodymium–iron–boron (NdFeB) and samarium–cobalt (SmCo). Given the high cost of RE materials, there is a great interest among various industry sectors in searching for breakthrough technologies that reduce the consumption of high-energy RE magnets in their electromechanical energy conversion systems. The reduction of the magnetic volume is typically realized either by replacing a portion of the high-energy RE magnet with the low-energy ferrite magnet (knows as hybrid structure) or by modifying the magnetic arrangement of the machine itself, where a portion of the physical RE magnets is removed and replaced by induced magnets (known as consequent-magnetic pole structure). For this purpose, this article presents a review of the current state-of-the-art motor typologies with less-RE PMs and their key design challenges, followed up by a series of recommended guidelines to overcome related design challenges.