Mechatronics, energy, electricity, integration team

Improvement of design approaches based on multi-physical criteria for electrical machines

In recent years, the con­trol of the vibro-acoustic and ther­mal behav­iour of machines has increased con­sid­er­ably, with­out how­ev­er giv­ing total­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry results in cer­tain prac­ti­cal cas­es, part­ly due to major uncer­tain­ties. These uncer­tain­ties must be con­trolled, ide­al­ly, with the help of fin­er modelling.

A bet­ter deter­mi­na­tion and local­i­sa­tion of ther­mal exchange coef­fi­cients is a first approach, but tak­ing into account the cou­plings between vibra­to­ry, ther­mal and mag­ne­tostric­tive phe­nom­e­na is also an approach that the team is work­ing on.

A major advance will also con­cern the inte­gra­tion of mod­el­ling uncer­tain­ties into the more tra­di­tion­al uncer­tain­ties of the input para­me­ters of the mod­els (mate­r­i­al, dimen­sion­al tol­er­ances, etc.) to achieve a more robust design. From this point of view, the effi­cien­cy of the design approach is an impor­tant point to be tak­en into account by mod­el reduc­tions or meth­ods using sub­sti­tute mod­els. At the sys­tem design lev­el, the mod­el­ling bricks are already present and a syn­the­sis approach for the design has been initiated.

Development of a design approach and associated prototyping of measurement and actuation microsystems

A main objec­tive is to design and devel­op com­pact micro-actu­a­tion and/or mea­sure­ment prin­ci­ples to facil­i­tate their inte­gra­tion. The orig­i­nal approach pro­posed is based on dif­fer­ent pil­lars such as the design of mul­ti­func­tion devices or dig­i­tal actu­a­tion designed and pro­to­typed in a microtech­ni­cal con­text with a view to reduc­ing or even elim­i­nat­ing sen­sors while guar­an­tee­ing the per­for­mance of the system.

The orig­i­nal­i­ty of the work car­ried out by the team also focus­es on the reduc­tion of con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the actu­a­tor work­space through the use of pho­ton­ic means in inter­ac­tion with active mate­ri­als, for the devel­op­ment of cou­pled pow­er sup­ply and remote con­trol means, as well as for the devel­op­ment of mea­sure­ment systems.

Whether for actu­a­tion or mea­sure­ment sys­tems, the mod­el­ling approach is struc­tured by a glob­al sys­tem mod­el based, when nec­es­sary, on detailed mod­el­ling of mul­ti-phys­i­cal inter­ac­tions or the behav­iour of the active mate­ri­als involved.

Development of networks of communicating microsystems

Mas­ter­ing the design of com­pact micro-actu­a­tors and sen­sors makes it pos­si­ble to envis­age the inte­gra­tion of sev­er­al actu­a­tors and/or sen­sors oper­at­ing col­lec­tive­ly in order to car­ry out com­plex tasks such as, for exam­ple, the micro-con­vey­ing of small-sized objects (mechan­i­cal parts of clocks and watch­es, elec­tron­ic com­po­nents, etc.).

This results in dis­trib­uted actu­a­tion or mea­sure­ment approach­es on which the team will posi­tion itself by propos­ing a design approach lead­ing to a topol­o­gy opti­mised to achieve the desired per­for­mance (stroke/extension, res­o­lu­tion, speed…).

This action requires in par­tic­u­lar an in-depth study of ener­gy-sav­ing dis­trib­uted con­trol strate­gies, both in terms of algo­rith­mic and hard­ware, but also the fusion of infor­ma­tion from addi­tion­al mea­sure­ment probes.

With­in the frame­work of these dis­trib­uted con­trol strate­gies, microsys­tems inte­grat­ing a remote com­mu­ni­ca­tion func­tion are devel­oped with the aim of retriev­ing infor­ma­tion on the state of the dis­trib­uted microsys­tem net­work while ensur­ing a high lev­el of tech­no­log­i­cal integration.

Energy Management in Systems

The diver­si­ty of the team’s skills is ben­e­fi­cial to the « sys­tem » issues. The team’s his­to­ry prompt­ed them to work main­ly on sys­tem com­po­nents rather than on their inte­gra­tion into a glob­al sys­tem approach.

Close inter­ac­tions such as, for exam­ple, the inter­ac­tions between the pulse-width mod­u­la­tion strate­gies of pow­er elec­tron­ics and the asso­ci­at­ed pas­sive com­po­nents have been dealt with, but the sys­tem approach is not yet ful­ly exploit­ed and is there­fore part of the cur­rent work.

This sys­tem approach is rein­forced by new con­tri­bu­tions in sys­tem design and by a good knowl­edge of the elec­tro­chem­i­cal phe­nom­e­na devel­oped in recent years on bat­ter­ies. The ener­gy stor­age device is indeed a key ele­ment in embed­ded sys­tems. Its con­trol is cru­cial for the devel­op­ment of clean mobil­i­ty, where the real-time char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of the age­ing of Li-ion bat­ter­ies can still be improved.

The team aims to imple­ment health state esti­ma­tors capa­ble of deter­min­ing the nature of age­ing and thus to antic­i­pate its crit­i­cal­i­ty. Ener­gy stor­age ele­ments can also be impor­tant ele­ments in meso (or micro) sys­tems for actu­at­ing, mea­sur­ing or recov­er­ing ener­gy, but its inte­gra­tion has been rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle studied.