Efficiency Evaluation on Cooling Behavior of Water-Cooling Jacket for Synchronous Reluctance Motor

Abstract

This study presents the cooling efficiency after installing a water-cooling jacket for a 3-kW synchronous reluctance motor of an electric motorcycle and the factors influencing its thermal behavior by experimental and simulation approaches. The testing process was conducted as a method to collect input parameters and validate the results of the computing simulation. The simulation procedure used the step running technique to evaluate two different water-path models. The findings indicated that the maximum temperature of the stator winding and jacket cover decreased by 19.12 °C and 16.07 °C, respectively, following the installation of the water jacket and operation at a low flow rate with a current supply of 200 A. Furthermore, increasing the water flow rate leads to a substantial decrease in maximum temperature before a certain flow rate; 2 liters per minute (LPM) was chosen as the optimal rate. Temperature fluctuations exhibit an upward trend up to 1.85 °C with the higher supplied currents but drop with a higher flow rate. In addition, the motor maximum temperature in the long water-path jacket (LWJ) model was lower than in the short water-path jacket (SWJ) model due to the higher heat transfer coefficient (HTC).