Skip to main content
SHARE
News

Transportation—Speedy motor modeling

Laminations such as these are compiled to form the core of modern electric vehicle motors. ORNL has developed a software toolkit to speed the development of new motor designs and to improve the accuracy of their real-world performance. Credit: Carlos Jones/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have created open source software that scales up analysis of motor designs to run on the fastest computers available, including those accessible to outside users at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. The Oak Ridge Software Toolkit for Electromagnetic Devices, or OeRSTED, can be used to design the lightweight, low cost and powerful electric cars of the future. This research depends on quickly calculating a challenging mix of electromagnetics and materials for motors with unmatched accuracy. “What used to take months to design can now take a week or even a day on a supercomputer,” said ORNL’s Jason Pries, who has used the lab’s supercomputers to design a motor without rare earth magnets—resolving a critical materials issue for EVs. The software is available for download at this link.