In the electrical machines, detrimental effects are resulted often due to the overheating, such as insulation material degradation, demagnetization, decreased lifetime and efficiency of the motor and Joule losses. Hence, it is vital to optimize the reliability and performance of the electric motors (E-Motor) and to reduce the maintenance and operating costs.
This study brings the analysis capability of CFD for the air-cooling of an E-Motor powering on E-Machines. With the aggressive focus on electrification across automotive industry, there is an increasing need of CFD modeling to perform virtual simulations of the E-Motors to determine the viability of the designs and their performance capabilities. The thermal predictions are extremely vital as they have tremendous impact on the design, spacing and sizes of motors.
With this study using Ansys Fluent - Maxwell coupling, a complete 3D CFD with CHT modeling of an Electric Motor, including all the key components like the windings, rotor and stator laminate, endings etc. is evaluated. Rotation effect of rotor and the net effect of the air cooling on the different solid components is predicted. The study shows the mesh capturing of complicated, intricate paths with relative ease combined with the robust high fidelity interface capturing for CHT with rapid turnaround times makes it a very attractive process for design studies. Thermal results obtained are compared and coupled to 2D ANSYS Maxwell model to do the 2D-3D (Ansys-Maxwell interface) coupling.
Study demonstrated capability RFM approach which provide a mechanism to assess motor thermal management prior to hardware fabrication and process developed can be used for most of e-motor thermal investigations.
Key Words:
e-motor 3D modeling, Ansys-Fluent, Ansys-maxwell, 3D-2D coupling, Thermal management, Right Fidelity Modeling (RFM)