Coupled Modeling of Permanent Magnet Generator Cooling using CFD

The aim of this paper is to show the complex analysis of electric machine cooling, using a modern method based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and finite elements method (FEM). The main advantage of this solution are lower computational demands compared with commonly used approach based only on CFD analysis. This solution shows using of two simulations based on a coupled one-way solution. First, airflow in the machine was solved to determine velocities in the inner space of the machine. Then thermal analysis was done with respect to results from the flow analysis that was done in previous step. An experimental measurement was performed for verification of this approach and for identification of thermal properties of the machine. The goal is to assess the ventilation impact on the thermal properties of individual parts of the electric machine.