Performance evaluation of the electric machine cooling system employing nanofluid as an advanced coolant

Abstract

In this paper, the overall performance of an electric machine cooling system was examined in terms of heat transfer and fluid flow. The structure of the cooling system was based on the cooling jacket method. The cooling jacket contains spiral channels surrounding the stator and end-windings of the electric machine. Al2O3-water nanofluid is used inside the channels as the cooling fluid. The concentration of nanoparticles and the geometric structure of the cooling system have special effects on both aspects of heat transfer and fluid flow. Therefore, in this paper, the overall performance of the cooling system was evaluated by considering these effects. This study compared the importance of heat transfer and fluid flow performances on the overall performance of the cooling system. Numerical analyses were performed by 3D computational fluid dynamics and 3D fluid motion analysis. The analyses were carried out based on the 3D finite element method using the pressure-based solver of the Ansys Fluent software in steady mode.