Electric Motor Thermal Management for Electric Traction Drives (Presentation): NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Thermal constraints place significant limitations on how electric motors ultimately perform. Finite element analysis and computational fluid dynamics modeling approaches are being increasingly utilized in the design and analysis of electric motors. As the models become more sophisticated, it is important to have detailed and accurate knowledge of material thermal properties and convective heattransfer coefficients. In this work, the thermal properties and inter-lamination thermal contact resistances were measured for different stator lamination materials. Also, convective heat transfer coefficients of automatic transmission fluid (ATF) jets were measured to better understand the heat transfer of ATF impinging on motor copper windings. Experiments were carried out at various ATFtemperatures and jet velocities to quantify the influence of these parameters on heat transfer coefficients.