Air-gap convection in a switched reluctance machine

Conference item

Switched reluctance machines (SRMs) have recently become popular in the automotive market as they are a good alternative to the permanent magnet machines commonly employed for an electric powertrain. Lumped parameter thermal networks are usually used for thermal analysis of motors due to their low computational cost and relatively accurate results. A critical aspect to be modelled is the rotor-stator air-gap heat transfer, and this is particularly challenging in an SRM due to the salient pole geometry. This work presents firstly a review of the literature including the most relevant correlations for this geometry, and secondly, numerical CFD simulations of airgap heat transfer for a typical configuration.

Authors: Romanazzi, P; Howey, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: IEEE
• Host title: 2015 Tenth International Conference on Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies (EVER)
• Journal: 2015 Tenth International Conference on Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies (EVER)
• Publication date: 2015-01-01
• DOI: 10.1109/EVER.2015.7112962
• ISBN: 9781467367844
• Keywords: thermal model; CFD; switched reluctance; SBTMR; convection; air-gap