Spindle motors are often used as drive motors where limited space is an issue, as is the case with storage media like hard disks. They employ an outer rotor structure in order to obtain a large torque, but to do so they have to use a great deal of permanent magnets while remaining thin and compact. In order to reduce the number of parts used in their composition, the rotor core has functions that both bear the magnet's flux path and transfer the generated torque, which supports the magnet, to the shaft. For this reason the rotor core is composed of materials that are easy to produce, meaning that there is a possibility that its efficiency as a magnetic circuit will decrease. As motors get smaller, they require a design that accounts for flux leakage because it begins to affect the disc in the rotor.
For this reason, spindle motors need electromagnetic field simulations that use the finite element method (FEM), which can account for detailed 3D geometry and magnetic saturation in materials, in order to carry out an accurate evaluation.
This Application Note shows how the Speed-Torque curve, the Torque-Current curve and the magnetic flux density distribution of a spindle motor can be obtained.