Hairpin windings are gaining increasing popularity in recent years due to their advantages in improving electrical machine performance while reducing manufacturing time and costs. Their geometrical features introduce new challenges and opportunities on thermal management. In particular, spray cooling is increasingly being used, since hairpin windings open up regular and accurately defined gaps in the end-windings compared to the traditional random windings. To date, technical literature on the effectiveness of spray cooling with hairpin windings is lacking, with no practical guidelines available to researchers. In this article, taking an existing hairpin-wound stator, a test rig is developed to investigate the cooling ability of different spray cooling setups on the end-windings. Three types of commercial spray nozzles are chosen to carry out a series of experiments, varying the oil flow rate, pressure, outlet velocity, and number of nozzles. The winding temperature and heat transfer coefficients are presented and discussed. Furthermore, the efficiency of spray cooling is reviewed based on the experimental results. Finally, suggestions on designing similar cooling setups and increasing the cooling efficiency are also provided.

While the electromagnetic aspects of hairpin windings are actively being investigated and discussed in recent literature, including the design rules together with the loss calculation and reduction techniques, the thermal performance and modeling aspects have received less attention to date. In hairpin windings, the conductors (pins) are comparatively larger and arranged as separate components in parallel within the slot. In contrast, conductors randomly overlap and contact each other for traditional random windings. The differences in the aforementioned winding physical characteristics result in a different methodology to develop the thermal network. This article presents a 3-D lumped parameter thermal network (LPTN) approach for an oil-spray cooled hairpin winding, which includes the slot thermal model configuration, the end-winding connections, together with different methodologies of analyzing the end-winding sprayed oil characteristics. The aforesaid thermal model captures unique features related to the winding technology and cooling mechanism, such as the nonuniform end-winding temperature caused by the uneven oil-spray cooling effects. Finally, taking an existing propulsion drive hairpin stator and a bespoke-designed test setup, the presented steady-state thermal modeling approach is experimentally validated covering various experimental tests, including different spray conditions.

High-speed permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) can provide high power density and high efficiency, which is often highly desirable in high performance applications. A multi-physics optimization program based on the multi-objective genetic algorithm was developed in this paper, to achieve a tradeoff solution between the electromagnetic, mechanical, and thermal aspects. First, the parametric electromagnetic model was modeled based on the finite-element method, and then a thermal network model and an analytical mechanical model to determine the thickness of the magnet and the sleeve were developed and merged within a design cycle of the machine, in an effort to attain the target performances of 20 kW/kg at 20,000 r/min for a 2 MW PMSM. Optimization results indicated that a final design with eight poles and 48 slots could obtain a comprehensive performance between power density and efficiency, and the performance satisfied all the requirements.

Hairpin windings and spray cooling are becoming an increasingly popular combination in the field of high-performance electrical machine design. Machines adopting hairpin windings can achieve higher torque and power densities while enabling them to be manufactured automatically on a large scale to meet the rapid market growth of electric transport. Spray cooling is an effective way for high heat flux removal, which has shown great potentials in electrical machine applications. Although spray cooling has been studied for decades in different engineering applications, the focus had been on investigating its performance on regular surfaces using low-viscosity liquids, such as water. In addition, many existing models for spray cooling heat transfer were built on spray parameters that are difficult to obtain without specialist equipment. Thus, most results from previous studies are difficult to be interpreted and directly applied to electrical machine applications. Practical and economical approaches for estimating the heat transfer coefficients (HTCs) of spray cooling on hairpin windings are needed. This article proposes and validates an experimental approach based on reduced-parameter models that can be applied to predict the HTC of spray cooling setups on hairpin windings.

Oil jet cooling and hairpin windings have become popular in electrical machine design for modern electric vehicles. In recent years, these two technologies are often combined and can be found in many commercial products. The highly effective cooling capability of oil jets and the high thermal conductance of hairpin windings greatly benefit the machine performance metrics. However, published quantitative literature on this topic is relatively scarce. This article presents experimental results and practical insights of oil jet cooling on the end region of hairpin windings. Temperature distribution, heat transfer coefficient, and cooling efficiency are all investigated. Consistent temperature profiles are observed throughout the range of flow rates. Moreover, the effects of using different types of oil and inclination angles are researched as well. Analysis of variance indicates that these two factors affect various aspects of the oil jet cooling’s performance. Results are also compared against data obtained from previous studies on oil spray cooling. This study can help engineers implement oil jet cooling in machine designs with hairpin windings.