Non destructive control of permanent magnet rotors in a perspective of electric motor circularity

Abstract

This work presents an innovative non destructive control process in order to guide for the end of life (re-use or recycling) of permanents magnets (PM) rotors of electric motors. The process is based on the measurement of the external field produced by the PM rotors. A Finite Element model of the rotor and its environment has been used to simulate a process of classification of the geometry of PM rotors, crucial information for the disassembling of the PM. Firstly, using a finite element model, we were able to investigate the field distribution outside the rotor of the magnetic flux density for different PM rotors designs. From this information, we can set up a classification methodology, based on the Central Voronoi Tessellation (CVT) method, which can help to identify how the PM are inserted within the rotor. This information can be very useful to choose PM disassembling process that should be applied.