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Application of potting material for a 100 kW radial flux PMSM

Conference Paper · September 2014

DOI: 10.1109/ICELMACH.2014.6960481

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M. Polikarpova Pia Lindh

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Juan A. Tapia J. Pyrhönen

University of Concepción Lappeenranta – Lahti University of Technology LUT
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 Application of Potting Material for a 100 kW
Radial Flux PMSM
M. Polikarpova, P. M. Lindh, member of IEEE, J. A. Tapia, member of IEEE and J. J. Pyrhönen,
member of IEEE

Φ
Abstract -- Thermal modeling of a 100 kW radial flux
permanent magnet electrical machine is studied and verified
by experiments. The traction machine has hybrid cooling. A
simplified thermal model based on Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) was used to analyze the temperature
distribution throughout the machine. The machine has a water
jacket and adopts potting materials around the end-windings.
The potting materials around the end windings operate as heat
paths to the frame coolant. The design principle of the cooling
system is presented in details. Experimental investigations are
performed on a 100 kW radial flux permanent magnet
electrical machine to validate the simulation results.
Index Terms—electrical machines, liquid jacket, hybrid
cooling system, thermal analysis
I. INTRODUCTION
forced air cooling of the rotor part that is suggested by other
authors to avoid over temperatures in the rotor embedded
permanent magnets [16].
The focus of the work consists in optimizing the hybrid
stator cooling system aiming at avoidance of hot spots in
the copper winding and achieving adequate temperatures of
the rotor embedded permanent magnets. This paper
discusses the design, construction and laboratory testing of
a 100 kW liquid cooled radial-flux permanent magnet
machine. The machine’s thermal model based on
computational method (CFD) is presented and discussed.
The optimization of the the presented cooling system is
based on the simulation results of numerical machine
model. Two types of potting materials utilized in the
machine studied are analyzed by the computational model

T HERMAL performance of any electrical machine is
important for providing reliable long term
performance. Liquid cooling solutions will become
widely used, as more powerful (higher power/size)
electrical machines are necessary for market in
applications, such as hybrid drives, wind generators etc. [1].
High power densities and varying operation conditions with
short high peaks in vehicle applications place heavy
requirements on cooling. Big and noisy fans with high
power consumption for own needs are inefficient for such
applications. Liquid cooling enhances heat transfer
coefficients and thereby higher current density and torque
level are allowed achieving higher power safely [2, 3].
Frame liquid cooling has become widely used in medium-
power electrical machines [2, 3, 4, 5]. This type of cooling
is designed to remove the heat losses of the stator copper
winding, the stator iron and therefore to preclude
propagation of heat towards the rotor. However, liquid
cooling adds manufacturing complexity [6]. Temperature
limit is a key factor affecting the efficiency and the capacity
of a machine to be developed [7].
A hybrid cooling system is proposed in this case. The
cooling arrangement is based on a circumferential liquid
duct incorporated in the stator frame and potting material
around the end-winding is used to remove heat from the
machine stator. In this design most of the heat generated in
the stator iron and copper winding is dissipated by
conduction to the housing and further by convection to
liquid. The potting material is also used to avoid additional
and tests. It is common to validate the possible cooling
system configurations by computational methods, as
functional prototypes are expensive and are not always
available for practical tests [8]. The traditional method
based on Lumped Parameter Thermal Network (LPTN) is
insufficient in conditions of sophisticated cooling systems
with special heat sink parts. The hybrid cooling causes high
temperature differences inside the machine parts depending
on location [5]. At the end, the simulation results are
validated by comparisons with several experiments on the
machine prototype.
II. DESCRIPTION OF MACHINE COOLING SYSTEM
A. Machine Studied
The main application of the machine with rated power
100 kW and rated speed 1500 rpm is a hybrid or battery
electric vehicle. The permanent magnets are embedded in
the rotor iron. In total the tooth-coil permanent magnet
machine, presented in Fig. 1, has 24 stator slots and 8 pole
pairs.

M. Polikarpova is with the department of electrical engineering,

Lappeenranta University of Technology, P.O. box 20, 53851
Lappeenranta, Finland (e-mail: maria@polikarpova@lut.fi).
P. M. Lindh is with the department of electrical engineering,
Lappeenranta University of Technology, P.O. box 20, 53851
Lappeenranta, Finland (e-mail: pia.lindh@lut.fi).
J. A. Tapia is with the department of electrical engineering, University
of Concepcion Chile (e-mail: juantapia@udec.cl)
J. J. Pyrhönen is with the department of electrical engineering,
Lappeenranta University of Technology, P.O. box 20, 53851 Fig. 1. Machine Design
Lappeenranta, Finland (e-mail: juha.pyrhonen@lut.fi). Table 1 provides the geometrical data of the machine.
 TABLE I
GEOMETRICAL DATA OF THE MACHINE STUDIED

Parameter Quantity

Stator Outer Diameter 433 mm

Air Gap Diameter 330 mm
Length of Air Gap 1.5 mm
Length of Stator 190 mm
Magnet Width × Height 68 × 12 mm2
Slot Width × Height 28 × 33 mm2

The main heat losses are concentrated in the copper

winding and in the iron because of high frequency and high
flux density (Table 2). The big number of poles in the rotor
and the high required rotational speed invoke high
frequency of the magnetic field variation in the iron. This
high frequency together with high flux density produces
considerable amount of iron losses, which in some Fig. 2. Stator Indirect Cooling System
operating points can be even higher than the copper losses.
Thus, the main challenge in the machine design is to TABLE III
remove the generated heat losses while keeping the rotor THERMAL PROPERTIES OF POTTING MATERIALS
embedded magnets and the stator winding insulation within High
Parameter/Potting Material Ceramacast 675N Temperature
adequate temperatures – up to 150ºC and 180ºC Epoxy 2315
correspondingly. Thermal Conductivity,
100 58
W/m·K
TABLE II Heat Capacity, J/kg·K 740 1000
HEAT SOURCES OF THE MACHINE Specific Density, kg/m3 3260 1800
Temperature Limit, ˚C 1200 185
At 560 Nm At 700 Nm Dielectric Streghth, kV/m 1.2·104 1.9·104
Heat Source Position
and 900 rpm and 1200 rpm Volume Resistivity, Ω·m 1011 1014
Stator Copper Windings 1000 W 1600 W
Stator Core 720 W 1140 W
Rotor Core 480 W 760 W The cooling duct with a section of 4 × 40 mm2 is
Permanent Magnets 300 W 330 W incorporated in the housing and evenly distributed with five
Frictional 300 W 500 W turns around the stator yoke for the whole machine length
Additional 600 W 1300 W
(Fig. 1). A greater contact area with the cooling medium in
B. Cooling System Introduction the housing incorporated circuit is desired from heat
In order to alleviate the thermal issue from the rotor transfer point of view. The liquid coolant is mix of water
magnets and avoiding overtemperatures in the copper end- and glycol. As shown in Fig. 2, the coolant enters the frame
winding - hybrid cooling of stator has been adopted. Liquid internal duct at specific temperature and volumetric flow
is pumped through frame incorporated cooling channel and rate forced by a pump and evacuates the heat generated by
takes away the heat conducted to it from the stator mainly. the machine components. The liquid coolant removes the
Figure 2 shows the schematic of the liquid cooling loop and heat losses by means of convection and conduction.
the internal design of the machine. The heat removal occurs Table IV lists the thermal properties of the mix of water
mainly through this external liquid jacket in the housing by and glycol for the calculation of the liquid jacket
the circulated coolant. The cooling circuit contains a pump performance.
TABLE IV
and a heat exchanger to force the coolant and to transfer the THERMAL PROPERTIES OF WATER&GLYCOL50% VOL (293K)
removed heat to air correspondingly.
The potting material allows avoiding a high thermal Parameter Quantity
resistance with poor heat conduction capability between the Thermal Conductivity 0.404 W/(m·K)
end-winding and the internal side of the liquid cooled frame Heat Capacity 3341 J/(kg·K)
presented by air. The air velocity and turbulence are usually Density 1076 kg/m3
Dynamic Viscosity 2.5·10-3 kg/m3
very low in this region and therefore the thermal resistance Flash/Freezing Temperatures 384 K/ 239 K
is high. The potting material facilitates a beneficial heat
conduction path from the end-winding to the cooled frame The convection coefficient hl/duct in the frame ducts is
using their high thermal conductivity, so heat can be more assumed from the definition of the Nusselt number by
effectively absorbed in the housing liquid jacket. Two Gnielinski correlation [10].
different potting materials are utilized and their thermal
properties are listed in Table III [9]. Dduct ⋅ hl/duct
Nu = (1)
kl

ε
8
(
⋅ Re − 1000 ⋅ Pr
D
)
Nu = (2)

( )
1/ 2

1 + 12.7 ⋅ ⎜
⎛ε ⎞
⎟ ⋅ Pr 2 / 3 −1
⎝8⎠
 − 1/ 4
ε = 0.316 ⋅ Re (3) TABLE V
D
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITIES OF MATERIALS USED IN MACHINE
Thermal Conductivities, W/Km,
where Nu is the Nusselt number, kl is the coolant thermal Direction, cylinder coordinates
Material of Model
conductance, ε is the friction factor, Re is the Reynolds Component
number, Pr is the Prandl number and Dduct is the duct r(radial) θ(tangential) z(axial)
diameter.
Iron 39 39 4.43
Fig. 3 presents the convection coefficient and pressure Stator Copper Winding 0.58 0.58 386
losses versus the inlet liquid velocity in a cooling circuit of Stator Copper End- 0.58 386 0.58
5.4 meters total length. The pressure losses are low in the Winding
Permanent Magnets 9 9 9
cooling circuit (∼ 0.1 bar). The maximum pressure drop Glass Fiber 0.3 0.3 0.3
takes place in the inlet and outlet ducts for the common Potting Material 100/58 100/58 100/58
liquid jacket of the electrical machine housing [10]. The
convection heat transfer coefficients increases notably with Figs. 4 and 5 show the temperature and the velocity
the rise of the inlet liquid velocity, as the regime of the fields of the machine resulted from CFD modeling in Fluent
liquid flow changes from laminar to turbulent.
for the operational point of 1200 rpm and 700 Nm. The
0.1 volumetric heat losses presented in Table II are imposed as
7000 heat sources of the simplified machine parts.
Convection Coefficient, h, W/Km2

Convection Coefficient
6000
Pressure Losses
Pressure losses, Ploss , bar
5000

4000
0.05

3000

2000

1000

0 0
5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Coolant Flow Rate, l/min

Fig. 3. Convection Coefficient and Pressure Losses of Coolant Flow in the

Liquid Jacket

III. DESCRIPTION OF THE ELECTRICAL

MACHINE THERMAL MODEL (a)

For the development of this work CFD techniques were

used to assess the air flow turbulences created by copper
bars inserted in the rotor iron beneath the magnets.
A. CFD Thermal Model of Machine
The 3D CFD simulated model presents a machine tooth
pitch in the cross-section and half of the machine length in
longitudinal direction. This small slice was chosen as the
machine winding phases are symmetrical and excited by
symmetrical currents [11]. The bearing and end shields are
excluded from the model.
For the simulation purposes a numerical grid with
586000 mesh nodes and 3030000 cells was created within
the machine model. The CFD modeling was implemented (b)
by the κ-ω SST turbulence and energy models of the Fig. 4. Velocity field inside the machine: a) non-potted stator, b) potted
commercial software Fluent. The thermal boundary stator.
condition (3200 W/m2·K and 48 ˚C) have been set on the
outer surface. The interface gap between the stator iron and
the housing was assumed to 0.01 mm [14]. The surface
roughness was defined on the boundary surfaces inside the
machine (back surfaces, surfaces in air gap). The surface
roughness affects the convection heat transfer coefficient
between the internal air flow and machine parts as it causes
disturbances into the viscous sublayer of boundary layers
[12]. The machine parts are constituted by homogeneous or
composite materials in cases of stator slot and end winding,
rotor and stator yokes (Table V) [17-19].
 experimentally. Fig. 6 shows the assembled prototype
PMSM. Some inaccuracies occurred in the manufacturing
process. One mistake was using ferromagnetic material in
the stator finger plates and another mistake was non-
uniform air gap (very small air gap at the other side of the
machine) increasing pulsation losses significantly. This
failure was caused by the stator yoke low height which was
not mechanically strong enough for the stack fixing
welding process. The rotor was removed and fixed. Some
of the ferromagnetic end-plate material above the
permanent magnets was removed with a lathe. So that the
no load losses diminished by app. 450 W.

(a)

Fig. 6. Test set up for the prototype machine

(b) Temperatures were measured with Pt-100 sensors. Six

Fig. 5. Temperature distribution within the machine parts: a) non-potted
stator, b) potted stator.
It is clear, that the non-potted machine has a lower air
velocity and therefore heat transfer coefficient in the end-
cap region (Fig. 4). The application of the potting material
provides 10-12 K internal air temperature drop compared
with the non-potted machine design.
The highest temperature occurs in the stator slots (125–
133˚C), as this part is heated also by the stator yoke and the
teeth losses. The end-windings (120–125˚C) are heated
only by the copper losses, which are removed efficiently
thorough the potting material towards the liquid jacket. The
lower internal air temperature and higher convection
coefficients in the end-cap provide lower temperatures of
the rotor embedded magnets (77˚C) and the rotor iron
(70˚C) in the potted machine design compared with the
thermocouples were attached to the end windings and there
to the center of the stator slots – one for each phase. Several
experiments were carried out, at different load and
operation conditions using the experimental setup. Fig. 7
illustrates the temperature rise of the slot winding, the end-
windings potted in epoxy-based potting (EP) and
Ceramacast (CP) and coolant. The machine prototype was
tested at an operational point of 560 Nm and 900 rpm and
the cooling flow was 16 l/min. The test results show that
the temperature stabilized in 4 hours, as the heat exchanger
is weak and the coolant temperature has also risen.
140
120
Temperature, T, ° C

100
non-potted one. Table VI summarizes the temperatures in
cases of the non-potted and the potted machines. Coolant
80 EndWinding (CP)
Slot Winding
TABLE VI EndWinding (EP)
TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION IN POTTED AND NON-POTTED MACHINE 60
DESIGNS BASED ON CFD

Machine Part Non-Potted Stator Potted Stator 40

Stator Yoke 85˚C 80˚C 20

0 30 60 90 120 150 180 210 240
Stator Slot 133˚C 125˚C
Time, t, min
End-Winding 125˚C 120˚C Fig. 7. Temperature rises of slot winding, end windings and coolant
Air in End-Cap 90˚C 80˚C during test
Rotor Embedded Magnets 83˚C 77˚C
Rotor Yoke 78˚C 70˚C The test resulted in the slot winding and the end
windings’ temperature rises of 77 K and 68–70 K
correspondingly. Therefore, the potting material provides
IV. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
efficient cooling of the end-windings. The thermal
A test machine has been manufactured to be validated resistance between the slot winding and the liquid cooled
frame is higher than between the potted end-winding and
the liquid cooled frame, so the slot winding is 5–7 K hotter
than the end winding. The utilized potting materials have
different thermal conductivities that result in 2K difference
between the different end windings.
The comparisons of the simulated versus measured
temperature at the winding end and the slot winding center
are 1 and 2 K correspondingly. Figure 8 illustrates the
temperature distribution within the machine parts from the
CFD modeling, which assumes the same boundary
conditions and heat losses as in test.
Fig. 8. Temperature within the machine parts
V. CONCLUSIONS
To fully exploit the advantages of liquid cooling jacket
and potting material, in this paper, we propose a hybrid
cooling scheme to obtain sufficient level of cooling and to
mitigate the thermal issue on the rotor magnets and stator
winding insulation. CFD analysis was used to model the
temperature distribution within the machine parts.
Based on the results in the previous sections, the
following result can be stated: potting materials allow
reducing temperature of the end winding by 7 K and
temperature of the rotor embedded magnets by 6 K. The
application of potting material causes higher air velocity
and thereby high convection coefficients in the end-cap
region.
It was found that the predicted temperature along the
stator windings from the model agreed with the
experimental results (1–2 K discrepancy). In the machine
prototype two different potting materials (Ceramacast 675N
with thermal conductivity 100 W/(m·K) and high
temperature epoxy 2315 with thermal conductivity of 58
W/(m·K)) were analysed. The potting material with the
higher thermal conductivity could provide only 2–3 K
lower temperature of the end-winding region.
VI. REFERENCES
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cooling systems using computational fluid dynamics and analytical
thermal models," IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, issue
99, accepted in 2013.
[2] Z. Huang, F. Marquez, M. Alakula and J. Yuan, "Characterization
and application of forced cooling channels for traction motors in
HEVs," ICEM, pp. 1210-1216, 2012.
[3] M. Sikora, R. Vlach and P. Navratil, " The unusual water cooling
applied on small asynchronous motor," Engineering Mechnics., vol.
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[4] C. Kral, A. Haumer and T. Bäuml, "Thermal model and behavior of
a totally-enclosed-water-cooled squirrel-cage induction machine for
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[5] E. Odvarka, N.L. Brown, A. Mebarki , M. Shanel, S. Narayanan and
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VII. BIOGRAPHIES
Maria Polikarpova was born in 1985 in Severodvinsk, Russia, received
the Specialist Degree in Industrial Heat and Power from Saint-Petersburg
Technological University of Plant Polymers, Russia in 2008 and Master of
Science (M.Sc.) degree from Lappeenranta University of Technology
(LUT), Finland in 2009. She is currently the PhD student in the
Department of Electrical Engineering in LUT, where she studies heat
transfer processes and cooling systems of electric motors and electric
drives.
Pia Lindh (previously Salminen), a Member of IEEE, born in Helsinki in
1969, received her M. Sc. degree in energy technology in 1998 and her D.
Sc. degree in electrical engineering (Technology) in 2004 from
Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Lappeenranta, Finland.
She is currently serving as an associate professor at the Department of
Electrical Engineering in LUT Energy, Lappeenranta, where she is
engaged in teaching and research of electric motors and electric drives.
Her research work focuses on permanent magnet motors, especially
concentrated winding machines.
Juan A. Tapia received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical
engineering from the University of Concepcion, Chile, in 1991, 1997,
respectively and the Ph.D. degree at the University of Wisconsin, Madison
in 2002. Since 1992, he started to work with the Department of Electrical
Engineering, University of Concepcion, where he is currently an Associate
Professor. Since 2010 he has been a FiDiPro Fellow from Academy of
Finland at Lappeenranta University of Technology where he conducts
research on PM machine on LUT-Energia Group. On 2014 he is a
professor in University of Concepcion. His primary research areas are
electrical machines design, numerical method for electromagnetic field,
DSP-based electric machine control, and renewable energy.
Juha Pyrhönen, a Member of IEEE, was born in 1957 in Kuusankoski,
Finland, received the Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree from Lappeenranta
University of Technology (LUT), Finland in 1991. He became an
Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at LUT in 1993 and a
Professor of Electrical Machines and Drives in 1997. He is currently the
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Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, where he is engaged in
research and development of electric motors and electric drives.
His current interests include different synchronous machines and
drives, induction motors and drives and solid-rotor high-speed induction
machines and drives.