A Comprehensive Characterization of Hollow Conductor Additively Manufactured Coils and Thermal Management System for a 250 kW SPM Machine

This paper presents a comprehensive study on thermal management system and behavior of additively manufactured coils through heat pipe based liquid cooling thermal management system, for a 250 kW and 5,000 rpm surface permanent magnet machine. Heat pipes and liquid cooling test setups are described and discussed. The thermal discussion is concluded by experimental results showing the effectiveness of the thermal management system proposed in this paper. Single and dual condenser liquid cooled configurations are tested under current levels ranging from 80 Arms to 140 Arms and up to 800 Hz. Comparison between these cooling systems shows the effectiveness of both configurations for AlSi10Mg additively manufactured coils. For the proposed system, the heat load does not exceed the capabilities of either of the cooling methods and therefore the performances are similar. FEA is performed using ANSYS Maxwell to model the losses at various frequencies and current levels. The FEA results match the experimental findings with a maximum error of 5.9%. Finally, the FEA results are used to predict experimental losses for the coils at the rated conditions of 1250 Hz and 268 A_rms which are beyond the experimental setup limits.