The Improvement of Permeability and Strength in Soft Magnetic Composites Motor Core Using Spark Plasma Sintering Process

The practical uses of soft magnetic composite(SMC) for an electrical motor is presented in this paper. SMC allows obtaining improved stator and core shapes as well as totally new design concepts such as claw pole motor. However, a major disadvantage of soft magnetic composites was their weak strength. In this study, spark plasma sintering (SPS) was utilized to improve the strength of SMC. Advantages of the SPS process over other conventional sintering process are the faster heating and cooling rates ensured and higher pressure applied during the sintering procedure. This allows obtaining high strength products in short periods of time to meet with industrial application without insulation destruction. This paper introduces the development of high strength soft magnetic composite motor core and examples of practical application for industries. The result showed that the SPS process increased the fracture strength, about 1.3 to 1.7 times, of SMC compare to the conventional compaction. Also we derive method to reduce the iron loss in the SPS sintering process using control forming temperature. As the forming temperature decreased from 500 degrees C to 300 degrees C, reduction of iron-loss was obtained from 192W/kg to 21W/kg by using SPS sintering process. Moreover, with increased the SPS sintering process pressure value from 250MPa to 800MPa which is the conventional compaction condition and decreased forming temperature to 200 degrees C, iron-loss was measured. The results showed that iron-loss was obtained 11.42W/kg and it was similar value of conventional compaction results.