New Cooling System Design of BLDC Motor for Electric Vehicle Using Computation Fluid Dynamics Modeling

Overheating in electrical motors results in detrimental effects such as degradation of the insulation materials, demagnetization of magnets, increases in Joule losses, and decreases in motor efficiency and lifetime. Thus, it is important to find ways to dissipate heat from the motor and to keep the motor operating at its most efficient temperature. In this study, a new design to guide air flow through a given brushless direct current (BLDC) motor is developed and the design is analyzed, specifically by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The results showed that the temperature distribution in the three proposed models is lower than that in the original model, although the speed of the cooling fan in the original model reaches a very high value of $15{\times}10^3$ rpm. The results also showed that CFD can be effectively used to simulate the heat transfer of BLDC motors.