Abstract
Recently, the automobile of the future will be able to substitute an electric vehicle for an internal combustion engine, so the following research is actively in the process of advancing. A traction motor is one of the core parts which compose the electric vehicle. Especially, it is difficult to connect cooling water piping to an in-wheel motor because the in-wheel motor is located within the wheel structure. This structure has disadvantage for closed type and air cooling, so the cooling design of motor housing and internal in-wheel motor is important. In this study, thermo-flow analysis of the in-wheel motor for vehicles was performed in consideration of ram air effect. In order to improve cooling efficiency of the motor, we variously changed geometries of housing and internal shape. As a result, we found that the cooling efficiency was most excellent, in case the cooling groove direction was same with air flow direction and arranged densely. Furthermore, we investigated the cooling performance enhancement with respect to variable geometries of internal in-wheel motor.