Thermal Modelling of TEFC Alternators

The importance and necessity for an electrical machine design process where thermal and electromagnetic issues are considered in an iterative manner is clear today. A commercially available thermal modelling package is used to investigate the design of a TEFC synchronous machine for a mobile refrigeration application, which imposes significant demands on the thermal performance of the machine. Experimental results of a fully instrumented machine have been used to show that the software package predicts the thermal performance of the machine to a high degree of accuracy. Sensitivity analysis was used to optimise the machine for the required application