Modelling and Validation of a Switched Reluctance Motor Stator Tooth with Direct Coil Cooling

Abstract

This paper presents the modelling and validation of an advanced thermal lumped parameter (LP) model for a stator tooth of a switched reluctance motor (SRM) with a dry lateral slot cooling method. Standard and simple lumped parameter models for electric motors can insufficiently predict the temperature distribution within the components of the motor. In standard LP models, only several nodes are used to model each component, while more accurate models are needed to predict the effect of different cooling methods on the thermal performance of the motor without the need for experiments. A fully 3D thermal finite element (FE) model could be used but this would increase effort, complexity and computing time unnecessarily. Therefore, an advanced 3D LP model including the dry lateral slot cooling method was developed and validated based on experiments on a real stator tooth cooled with the modelled cooling method. The 3D LP model is extracted from a 2D FE radial simulation of the stator tooth and extended axially in 3D to include axial heat transfer. Experiments were performed with a setup consisting of one tooth of a SRM without rotor, but including stator iron, one winding and two triangular stainless steel tubes in the slots at both sides of the winding cooled by a 60/40% mixture by mass of water-glycol. The setup is equipped with several thermocouples integrated within the components to determine the component temperatures. Three inlet temperatures (20, 35 and 50°C) and four flow rates (2, 6, 9 and 13 l/min) of the coolant were tested at three different heat losses in the winding (10, 30 and 50 W). A comparison between the simulated and measured temperatures showed generally higher temperatures in the experiment. The presence of imperfections in the manufacturing of the experimental setup was determined as the cause of this offset. These imperfections result in lower material thermal conductivities and higher contact resistances than expected from scientific literature. After fitting those thermal properties on the measurements, similar simulated temperatures could be obtained as in the experiments.