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The term inrunner refers to an electric motor where the rotor (runner) is inside the stator. The term is in particular used for brushless motors to differentiate them from outrunners that have their rotor outside the stator. The vast majority of electric motors are inrunners.[ citation needed ]
Compared to outrunner motors, inrunners tend to spin exceptionally fast, often as high as 11 000 r/min per volt, far too fast for most aircraft propellers. However, inrunners lack torque. As a result, most inrunners are used in conjunction with a gearbox in both surface and aircraft models to reduce speed and increase torque
In many cases the inrunner is "ironless" in that there is no iron stator core to magnetize. The wire is run inside the can and held in place by epoxy or other resin material. Because there is no magnetic iron core, ironless in runners have no cogging, in that they spin freely with no magnetic interaction when power is disconnected. A well-designed ironless inrunner is extremely efficient. This is because there is virtually no iron magnetization loss and very little windage loss in the motor. However, due to the lack of a magnetic stator core, the ironless motor has very low torque but also higher motor velocity constant (Kv,a unit that is defined as r/min per volt) when compared to an iron core motor.
Modern brushless inrunners can have iron core windings to address the lack of torque while maintaining high r/min capability, more commonly used in radio-controlled car and truck applications
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An electromagnetic coil is an electrical conductor such as a wire in the shape of a coil. Electromagnetic coils are used in electrical engineering, in applications where electric currents interact with magnetic fields, in devices such as electric motors, generators, inductors, electromagnets, transformers, and sensor coils. Either an electric current is passed through the wire of the coil to generate a magnetic field, or conversely, an external time-varying magnetic field through the interior of the coil generates an EMF (voltage) in the conductor.
A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to the magnetic field. A permanent magnet's magnetic field pulls on ferromagnetic materials such as iron, and attracts or repels other magnets. In addition, a nonuniform magnetic field exerts minuscule forces on "nonmagnetic" materials by three other magnetic effects: paramagnetism, diamagnetism, and antiferromagnetism, although these forces are usually so small they can only be detected by laboratory equipment. Magnetic fields surround magnetized materials, electric currents, and electric fields varying in time. Since both strength and direction of a magnetic field may vary with location, it is described mathematically by a function assigning a vector to each point of space, called a vector field.
An electric motor is an electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a wire winding to generate force in the form of torque applied on the motor's shaft. An electric generator is mechanically identical to an electric motor, but operates in reverse, converting mechanical energy into electrical energy.
A stepper motor, also known as step motor or stepping motor, is a brushless DC electric motor that divides a full rotation into a number of equal steps. The motor's position can be commanded to move and hold at one of these steps without any position sensor for feedback, as long as the motor is correctly sized to the application in respect to torque and speed.
A commutator is a rotary electrical switch in certain types of electric motors and electrical generators that periodically reverses the current direction between the rotor and the external circuit. It consists of a cylinder composed of multiple metal contact segments on the rotating armature of the machine. Two or more electrical contacts called "brushes" made of a soft conductive material like carbon press against the commutator, making sliding contact with successive segments of the commutator as it rotates. The windings on the armature are connected to the commutator segments.
An alternator is an electrical generator that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy in the form of alternating current. For reasons of cost and simplicity, most alternators use a rotating magnetic field with a stationary armature. Occasionally, a linear alternator or a rotating armature with a stationary magnetic field is used. In principle, any AC electrical generator can be called an alternator, but usually the term refers to small rotating machines driven by automotive and other internal combustion engines.
An induction motor or asynchronous motor is an AC electric motor in which the electric current in the rotor needed to produce torque is obtained by electromagnetic induction from the magnetic field of the stator winding. An induction motor can therefore be made without electrical connections to the rotor. An induction motor's rotor can be either wound type or squirrel-cage type.
A synchronous electric motor is an AC electric motor in which, at steady state, the rotation of the shaft is synchronized with the frequency of the supply current; the rotation period is exactly equal to an integral number of AC cycles. Synchronous motors use electromagnets as the stator of the motor which create a magnetic field that rotates in time with the oscillations of the current. The rotor with permanent magnets or electromagnets turns in step with the stator field at the same rate and as a result, provides the second synchronized rotating magnet field. A synchronous motor is termed doubly fed if it is supplied with independently excited multiphase AC electromagnets on both the rotor and stator.
A brushless DC electric motor (BLDC), also known as an electronically commutated motor, is a synchronous motor using a direct current (DC) electric power supply. It uses an electronic controller to switch DC currents to the motor windings producing magnetic fields that effectively rotate in space and which the permanent magnet rotor follows. The controller adjusts the phase and amplitude of the DC current pulses to control the speed and torque of the motor. This control system is an alternative to the mechanical commutator (brushes) used in many conventional electric motors.
A DC motor is an electrical motor that uses direct current (DC) to produce mechanical force. The most common types rely on magnetic forces produced by currents in the coils. Nearly all types of DC motors have some internal mechanism, either electromechanical or electronic, to periodically change the direction of current in part of the motor.
A squirrel-cage rotor is the rotating part of the common squirrel-cage induction motor. It consists of a cylinder of steel laminations, with aluminum or copper conductors embedded in its surface. In operation, the non-rotating stator winding is connected to an alternating current power source; the alternating current in the stator produces a rotating magnetic field. The rotor winding has current induced in it by the stator field, like a transformer except that the current in the rotor is varying at the stator field rotation rate minus the physical rotation rate. The interaction of the magnetic fields of currents in the stator and rotor produce a torque on the rotor.
The shaded-pole motor is the original type of AC single-phase motor, dating back to at least as early as 1890. A shaded-pole motor is a small motor with either two or four poles, in which the auxiliary winding is composed of a copper ring or bar surrounding a portion of each pole to produce a weakly rotating magnetic field. When single phase AC supply is applied to the stator winding, due to shading provided to the poles, a rotating magnetic field is generated. This auxiliary single-turn winding is called a shading coil. Currents induced in this coil by the magnetic field create a second electrical phase by delaying the phase of magnetic flux change for that pole enough to provide a 2-phase rotating magnetic field. The direction of rotation is from the unshaded side to the shaded (ring) side of the pole. Since the phase angle between the shaded and unshaded sections is small, shaded-pole motors produce only a small starting torque relative to torque at full speed. Shaded-pole motors of the asymmetrical type shown are only reversible by disassembly and flipping over the stator, though some similar looking motors have small, switch-shortable auxiliary windings of thin wire instead of thick copper bars and can reverse electrically. Another method of electrical reversing involves four coils.
In electrical engineering, the armature is the winding of an electric machine which carries alternating current. The armature windings conduct AC even on DC machines, due to the commutator action or due to electronic commutation, as in brushless DC motors. The armature can be on either the rotor or the stator, depending on the type of electric machine.
An AC motor is an electric motor driven by an alternating current (AC). The AC motor commonly consists of two basic parts, an outside stator having coils supplied with alternating current to produce a rotating magnetic field, and an inside rotor attached to the output shaft producing a second rotating magnetic field. The rotor magnetic field may be produced by permanent magnets, reluctance saliency, or DC or AC electrical windings.
An induction generator or asynchronous generator is a type of alternating current (AC) electrical generator that uses the principles of induction motors to produce electric power. Induction generators operate by mechanically turning their rotors faster than synchronous speed. A regular AC induction motor usually can be used as a generator, without any internal modifications. Because they can recover energy with relatively simple controls, induction generators are useful in applications such as mini hydro power plants, wind turbines, or in reducing high-pressure gas streams to lower pressure.
The rotor is a moving component of an electromagnetic system in the electric motor, electric generator, or alternator. Its rotation is due to the interaction between the windings and magnetic fields which produces a torque around the rotor's axis.
An outrunner is an electric motor having the rotor outside the stator, as though the motor were turned inside out. They are often used in radio-controlled model aircraft.
In electrical engineering, electric machine is a general term for machines using electromagnetic forces, such as electric motors, electric generators, and others. They are electromechanical energy converters: an electric motor converts electricity to mechanical power while an electric generator converts mechanical power to electricity. The moving parts in a machine can be rotating or linear. Besides motors and generators, a third category often included is transformers, which although they do not have any moving parts are also energy converters, changing the voltage level of an alternating current.
Dan Mircea Ionel is Professor of electrical engineer, the L. Stanley Pigman Chair in Power, and the Director of the SPARK Laboratory and of the PEIK Institute at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY. Professor Ionel's research includes the electric machines, wind turbines, power system, applications of power electronics, smart buildings. By the number of citations, he is among the world top 2% highly cited researchers.
An axial flux motor is a geometry of electric motor construction where the gap between the rotor and stator, and therefore the direction of magnetic flux between the two, is aligned parallel with the axis of rotation, rather than radially as with the concentric cylindrical geometry of the more common radial flux motor.