Direct Conductor Cooling of Outer-Rotor Machine Enabled by Additive Manufacturing

2023 IEEE International Electric Machines & Drives Conference (IEMDC 2023) 2023
Martin Sarap, Ants Kallaste, Payam Shams Ghahfarokhi, Hans Tiismus, Toomas Vaimann

Most of the heat in electrical machines is generated in the windings, which is why cooling them directly can give the largest gains in thermal performance. Normally this is complicated, especially in an outer-rotor machine, where the stator windings are not easily accessible. Although, with additive manufacturing, the conductor’s geometry can be freely modelled and optimized for thermal performance. Therefore, this paper presents additively manufactured windings with integrated heatsinks, which are cooled by a centrifugal fan attached to an outer-rotor machine. The aluminum alloy windings achieved a current density of 9.3 A/mm2 with a hotspot temperature of 85 °C.

Keywords
Additive manufacturing , direct conductor cooling , outer-rotor machine , electrical machines
DOI
10.1109/IEMDC55163.2023.10238858
Hyperlink
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10238858

Sarap, M., Kallaste, A., Shams Ghahfarokhi, P., Tiismus, H., Vaimann, T. Direct Conductor Cooling of Outer-Rotor Machine Enabled by Additive Manufacturing. In: 2023 IEEE International Electric Machines & Drives Conference (IEMDC 2023), United States of America, San Francisco, 15-18 May, 2023. Piscataway: IEEE, 2023, pp.1-4. ISBN 979-8-3503-9900-4. e-ISBN 979-8-3503-9899-1. Available from: doi:10.1109/IEMDC55163.2023.10238858

Publication language
English (en)