Investigation of Triply Periodic Minimal Surfaces to Lightweight Liquid Cooling Jackets for High-Performance Electrical Machines

Reaching net-zero targets through electrification requires drastic performance improvements over existing electrical machines. One approach to improving power density is to lightweight the casing and cooling infrastructure, but for the highest performance applications, conventional designs may prove insufficient. This paper leverages the geometrical freedom enabled by additive manufacturing to integrate triply periodic minimal surfaces into an electrical machine liquid cooling jacket. This maximises the surface area to volume ratio, yielding a higher heat transfer coefficient for a given volume, and allowing the radial dimension of the cooling jacket to be reduced giving a commensurate reduction in mass. A design methodology is presented to quantitatively evaluate the benefit of these structures, and the results are validated with conjugate heat transfer simulations. Initial results show a 20 % reduction to the stator housing thickness, and an associated 10 % saving in mass.