A semi-flooded cooling for a high speed machine: Concept, design and practice of an oil sleeve

Xu, Z.; La Rocca, A.; Arumugam, P.; Pickering, S. J.; Gerada, C.; Bozhko, S.; Gerada, D.; Zhang, H.

Abstract

This paper proposes a semi-flooded cooling concept for a high speed machine design. The electrical machine considered is for an aircraft starter-generator system where power density and efficiency are crucial. In order to achieve the high power density permanent magnet machine, a direct oil cooling strategy for the machine stator is adopted. A stator oil sleeve is designed to separate the machine into an oil-flooded stator chamber and an oil-free rotor chamber to avoid windage loss due to the high rotor speed. Different materials, Carbon Fiber (CF) and E-glass fiber (GF) are considered for the oil-sleeve design. Implications of the aforementioned materials on the structural design are investigated and optimized accordingly using finite element methods. It is shown that the oil sleeve made of CF provides structural capability with a minimum sleeve thickness. However the sleeve made from GF has the benefit of having no electrical conductivity. Both oil sleeves are made and the GF sleeve is successfully applied to the machine and tested.

Citation

Xu, Z., La Rocca, A., Arumugam, P., Pickering, S. J., Gerada, C., Bozhko, S., …Zhang, H. (2017). A semi-flooded cooling for a high speed machine: Concept, design and practice of an oil sleeve. In Proceedings IECON 2017 - 43rd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society (8557-8562). https://doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2017.8217503

• Conference Name: IECON 2017 - 43rd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
• Conference Location: Beijing, China
• Start Date: Oct 29, 2017
• End Date: Nov 1, 2017
• Acceptance Date: Oct 29, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Dec 8, 2017
• Publication Date: Dec 18, 2017
• Deposit Date: Aug 24, 2018
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 8557-8562
• Book Title: Proceedings IECON 2017 - 43rd Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
• ISBN: 978-1-5386-1128-9
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2017.8217503
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1126790
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8217503