Improved thermal management and analysis for stator end-windings of electrical machines

Vincenzo Madonna, Adam Walker, Paolo Giangrande, Giovanni Serra, Chris Gerada, Michael Galea

Research output: Journal PublicationArticlepeer-review

122 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In an electrical machine design, thermal management plays a key role in improving the performance and reducing size. End-windings are commonly identified as the machine hot-spot. Hence, lowering and predicting end-windings temperature are crucial tasks in thermal management of electrical machines. This paper proposes and investigates a noninvasive but effective cooling method that aims for a uniform cooling of a machine's winding by implementing direct cooling on its end-windings. Modeling and experimental results show that a 25% hot-spot temperature reduction on a particular application can be achieved. To analyze the proposed technique in detail, an accurate but computationally economic lumped parameter thermal network is developed. Comparison between a 'standard' thermal network and its simplified equivalent (with less nodes) is presented where the models are developed and fine-tuned based on experimental data. All the above is used to investigate the potential of the proposed end-winding cooling method with different configurations of the methodology.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8464056
Pages (from-to)5057-5069
Number of pages13
JournalIEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
Volume66
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2019

Keywords

  • Electrical machines
  • end-windings
  • lumped parameter thermal network
  • thermal management

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Improved thermal management and analysis for stator end-windings of electrical machines'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this