Colloquia

Summary

Heat generation is an unavoidable and undesirable byproduct of electric motor operation. In order to use the motors to their fullest potential, integrated cooling systems are required. To be able to understand which factors have the highest impact in these cooling processes, as well as aiding in the design process simulations are performed.

Generally, these kind of multiphysics simulations require a large amount of computational power. This thesis develops a modelling approach based on thermal resistance networks with structured characterization. This model enabling flexible adaptation to different structural configurations and materials, while maintaining low computational requirements. By developing a new approach to thermal resistance network grid creation, this facilitates rapid evaluation of the thermal behaviour resulting from changes in both materials and motor layout.

The model shows good agreement with experimental measurements, with an average deviation of approximately 7%. Furthermore, the developed model is used to investigate the motor’s thermal distribution and cooling performance when the cooling shell material is changed from aluminium to steel.  

The main contribution of this research is the development of a flexible and computationally efficient modelling approach for analysing the thermal behaviour of electric motors.