The prospect of using advanced Neodymium-Iron-Boron (Nd2Fe14B) permanent magnet systems in electric vehicle motors, or other mobile platforms, is principally driven by i) the need to reduce input power requirements, as well as ii) to reduce the size and weight of drive systems. The decisive parameters for permanent magnet performance are its remnance (Br) and the maximum stored energy product (BH)max which provides a measure of the amount of work that can be extracted. In principle the larger the (BH)max, the greater the potential for reducing the size and weight of an existing device.
In Nd2Fe14B permanent magnets, both Br and (BH)max can be improved 300-400% via anisotropic textural alignments of the crystallites during thermo-mechanical processing. This proposed project attempts to prescribe, and experimentally validate, micro-mechanics based deformation processing methodologies (forging, rolling or extrusion), to incorporate favorable 'c' axis textural alignments in Nd2Fe14B-based permanent magnets. These methodologies will be demonstrated for a variety of requisite final cross-section or shape (square, round, tape or ring magnets), with an eventual performance increase in both remnance (Br) and stored energy product (BH) max.
