Design of Cooling Systems Using Computational Fluid Dynamics and Analytical Thermal Models

In this paper, a detailed methodology for the design and characterization of cooling systems oriented to electrical machines is presented. Different kinds of tools such as lumped-parameter models and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are combined all together in order to achieve accurate designs with reduced time consumptions. It is well known that CFD simulations can be very arduous and they can take too much time. In order to work out these drawbacks, in this work, several procedures to analyze electrical machines by CFD simulations are described in detail. For instance, it is described how to simulate fans or how to design a cooling system using CFD simulations. Finally, the proposed design methodology has been implemented in a real case study, designing the air cooling system for a permanent-magnet synchronous machine. Then, a prototype has been built in order to validate the methodology and the different design tools. The experimental results have a very good agreement with the expected ones.