PCB Winding for Electric Machines with Integrated 3D printed Heat Exchanger

Abstract

This paper proposes a printed circuit board (PCB) winding for radial flux electric machines. In addition, a 3-D printed heat exchanger is proposed to cool the PCB-based winding. The motivation is to minimize the cost of the stator winding, as winding the traditional magnet wire can be an expensive process. The integrated 3D printed heat exchanger (I3DHX) uses polymer-based fused filament fabrication (FFF). Most high-power density machines are cooled by a water jacket, which means the heat generated by windings must travel through the stator yoke to be rejected. The proposed approach focuses on moving the heat exchanger closer to the windings, which allows for increased current density in the windings, resulting in smaller slot areas and overall machine size.