Investigation of a thermal model for a Permanent Magnet assisted Synchronous Reluctance motor

The use of High Power Density (HPD) electric machines in applications such as Electric Vehicles amplifies the need for their optimal thermal design in conjunction with their electromagnetic design. Permanent Magnet Synchronous Reluctance Machines (PMaSynRMs) are specialized Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines where the magnet content in the flux barrier paths is reduced resulting in a relatively economical design. This paper provides the overview of a study of a thermal model for a Five Phase Permanent Magnet Synchronous Reluctance Machine with two flux barrier paths. The proposed thermal model is then verified with experimental results and FEA simulations. Once developed, its use for online temperature estimation or integrated with an optimization algorithm will be considered as future work.