CFD Study of Forced Air Cooling and  Windage Losses in a High Speed  Electric Motor

Kevin R. Anderson; Jun Lin; Chris McNamara; Valerio Magri

doi:10.4236/jectc.2015.52003

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Journal of Electronics Cooling and Thermal Control > Vol.5 No.2, June 2015

CFD Study of Forced Air Cooling and Windage Losses in a High Speed Electric Motor ()

Kevin R. Anderson¹, Jun Lin¹, Chris McNamara¹, Valerio Magri²

¹California State Polytechnic University at Pomona: Mechanical Engineering, Pomona, USA.
²CD-Adapco, Irvine, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/jectc.2015.52003 PDF HTML XML 6,175 Downloads 7,451 Views Citations

Abstract

High speed and high efficiency synchronized electric motors are favored in the automotive industry and turbo machinery industry worldwide because of the demands placed on efficiency. Herein an electric motor thermal control system using cooling air which enters from the drive end of the motor and exits from the non-drive end of the motor as the rotor experiences dissipates heat is addressed using CFD. Analyses using CFD can help to find the appropriate mass flow rate and windage losses while satisfying temperature requirements on the motor. Here, the air flow through a small annular gap is fed at 620 L/min (0.011 kg/sec) as the rotor spins at 100,000 rpm (10,472 rad/sec) and the rotor dissipates 200 W. The CFD results are compared with experimental results. Based upon the CFD findings, a novel heat transfer correlation suitable for large axial Reynolds number, large Taylor number, small annular gap Taylor-Couette flows subject to axial cross-flow is proposed herein.

Keywords

Electronics Cooling, High-Speed Motor, Windage Losses, Conjugate Heat Transfer

Share and Cite:

Anderson, K. , Lin, J. , McNamara, C. and Magri, V. (2015) CFD Study of Forced Air Cooling and Windage Losses in a High Speed Electric Motor. Journal of Electronics Cooling and Thermal Control, 5, 27-44. doi: 10.4236/jectc.2015.52003.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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