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Abstract

The substitution of electric motors for traditional combustion engines in vehicle drive systems is a major component of sustainable development. Compared to traditional combustion engines, electric motors have significantly higher efficiency coupled with reduced carbon and noise emissions. While these advantages have been exploited by the automotive industry for more than a decade in hybrid and electric cars, they are just now being investigated for use in large passenger aircraft. Aircraft applications, however, have their own unique challenges, including achieving > 1 MW levels of power at minimal weight. Such high power densities (>25 kW/kg), require the high efficiency achieved by integrating the power and control electronics with the motor in a small enclosure. An advanced thermal management system is needed to cool such a system, ensuring the temperatures of all components remain within safe limit under all conditions. Furthermore, the cooling system itself should be efficient (i.e. high COP), lightweight, and reliable.

A cooling system for such a 1 MW integrated electric motor will be presented. The cooling system includes a manifold minichannel cooling jacket and a direct stator wire cooling design. The jacket cools the stator core and the power electronics with its inner and outer surfaces, respectively. An additional direct wire cooling design is constructed, on account of the large amount of heat generated in the stator wire and the high thermal resistance between wire and lateral surface. The jacket and the wire cooling system would share the same coolant, reducing the complexity of the pumping, radiator and reservoir arrangement

About the Presenter: Prof. Patrick McCluskey is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is associated with the CALCE center where he is the principal investigator for projects related to packaging and reliability of electronic components for high power and high temperature environments. He is the author or co-author of over 150 technical articles on his research with nearly 3000 citations, and the co-author of three books. He has served as the technical program chair for several symposia and conferences in these research areas. He is a fellow of IMAPS, a senior member of IEEE, and a member of ASME. He is currently a member-at-large on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Electronic Packaging Society.