Design and Analysis of a Self-Circulated Oil Cooling System Enclosed in Hollow Shafts for Axial-Flux PMSMs

With the every-increasing demands for miniaturization, the efficient cooling techniques for axial-flux permanent magnet synchronous machines (AF-PMSMs) have attracted great attentions. In this paper, the thermofluid behaviors of a 7-kW 4000-rpm AF-PMSM are numerically investigated based on a coupled model, and the computations are validated by thermal tests performed on the AF-PMSM prototype. To enhance the heat dissipation capacity of the rotor components, it is proposed a self-circulated oil hermetically cooling system, for which the cooling liquid circulates in a hollow shaft. During operation, the oil flow driven by the centrifugal blades forms a closed oil circuit, and can create an effective heat flow path from the hot areas to the cold regions. The oil cooling system is employed in the AF-PMSM to effectively maintain, and evenly distribute, the motor temperature rise. The cooling effectiveness is proved by fluid flow and thermal coupled analyses. To further improve the heat dissipation capacity, the self-circulated oil-cooling structure is modified based on the calculated fluid flow distribution. Finally, the structural parameters are optimized by Taguchi method to minimize both the temperature rise and the rotor weight increment, and the optimization results are numerically and experimentally validated.