Thermal management of air-core stator for a large-capacity HTS motor

High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) motors have a good prospect in application of marine propulsion, wind energy and other industrial application for its benefits of lighter, more impact and high efficiency. An air-core stator for a large-capacity HTS motor is designed by Wuhan Institute of Marine Electric Propulsion (WIMEP). This motor uses HTS wire in the rotor field windings and conventional copper conductor in the stator coils. In order to obtain maximum advantage of the high flux generated by the HTS wire, the stator coil chooses transposed conductor to eliminate the heat losses, the teeth fixation the stator windings are non-magnetic and the stator is liquid cooled with insulating oil or de-ionized water. In this paper, structural design of air-core stator, cooling design of air-gap winding and stator temperature distribution are presented, compared and discussed.