Combined Thermofluid and Electromagnetic Optimisation of Stator Vent Cooling

Bersch, K.; Nuzzo, S.; Connor, P. H.; Eastwick, C. N.; Galea, M.; Rolston, R.; Vakil, G.

Abstract

© 2018 IEEE. A combined electromagnetic and thermal modelling approach has been developed to optimise the design of multiple radial stator vents in an air-cooled, synchronous generator with a power rating of several hundred kVA. An experimentally validated 3-D Conjugate Heat Transfer Computational Fluid Dynamics model has been created and coupled with 2-D Electromagnetic Finite Element Analysis. Correlations between the combined vent width and rotor copper, rotor iron and stator iron losses were derived from the electromagnetic analysis. These correlations were implemented into the optimisation procedure of the parametric thermofluid model. Five parameters: vent locations, widths and the height of a baffle, were optimised simultaneously with the aim of minimising the peak stator winding temperature. The peak stator winding temperature was reduced by 11.1 %. The average stator winding temperature decreased by 6.3 %. To maintain the machine's power output, the removal of active stator material was compensated by increasing the rotor current.

Citation

Bersch, K., Nuzzo, S., Connor, P. H., Eastwick, C. N., Galea, M., Rolston, R., & Vakil, G. (2018). Combined Thermofluid and Electromagnetic Optimisation of Stator Vent Cooling. In Proceedings: 2018 XIII International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM) (1116-1122). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICELMACH.2018.8507231

• Conference Name: 2018 XIII International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM)
• Conference Location: Alexandroupoli, Greece
• Start Date: Sep 3, 2018
• End Date: Sep 6, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Jun 6, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 25, 2018
• Publication Date: Sep 3, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jan 11, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 15, 2019
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Pages: 1116-1122
• Book Title: Proceedings: 2018 XIII International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM)
• ISBN: 9781538624777
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICELMACH.2018.8507231
• Keywords: Alternators, cooling; Electric machines; Electromagnetic modelling; Energy efficiency; Fluid dynamics; Generators; Magnetic losses; Thermal management
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1465764
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8507231
• Additional Information: © 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.