Abstract
Thermal management for electric machines (motors/generators) is important as the automotive industry continues to transition to more electrically dominant vehicle propulsion systems. A battery electric car application needs high power density motors to reduce the size and space, which makes the thermal management of the motor a challenging task. The major source of heat generation in electric motors are copper and iron losses. This heat increases the temperatures of the motor components. Many motor components work efficiently under some specified temperature limits. Higher temperatures may damage the windings insulations or may cause de-magnetization of the rotor magnets. Different cooling strategies are adopted for proper cooling of the heated components. In this paper, an analysis procedure for oil cooled motor (impinging automatic transmission fluid (ATF) jets onto the machine’s copper windings and rotor end rings) was developed to model thermal performance of motor’s thermal management system.