Investigation of windage splits in an enclosed test fixture having a high-speed composite rotor in low air pressure environments

The University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics (UT-CEM) has designed and conducted a series of composite rotor spin tests to measure the windage losses and temperature distributions of a test setup at high rotor speeds and low air pressures. The intent of the windage tests is to validate the windage loss predictions and investigate how the air-gap windage is distributed between the rotor and stator. The findings of the spin tests will then be used to perform windage-related thermal design and analysis of a high-speed electrical machine. The radial air-gap flows under the test conditions, a low rotor cavity air pressure of 1 torr and high rotor surface velocities of 333 and 614 m/s, were in a laminar flow regime. Transient rotor and stator finite-element thermal analyses, using the measured windage losses and predicted laminar-flow windage splits, have been carried out to analyze the rotor and stator temperature distributions. This paper shows the detailed thermal analysis and compares the predictions with the measurements. The predicted and measured transient rotor and stator temperatures are in good agreement.