Power Density Boosting Techniques for Reconfigurable Integrated Modular Motor Drives

Abstract

The electric drive power density and fault tolerance capability are of fundamental importance in many applications such as aerospace and traction applications. The modularization and the physical integration of the electric motor and the power converter components can lead to a high power density and a high fault tolerance drive system. The power density of a highly modular and integrated drive based on an axial flux permanent magnet synchronous machine and GaN converter is investigated in this paper. Several power density boosting techniques are provided and investigated using CFD simulations. These techniques incorporate optimization of the converter topology, the geometry of the shared cooling structure of the electric machine and the power converter and optimal selection of the materials in the path of heat transfer from the machine and the power converter to the cooling ambient. The power density of the reference integrated design is increased from 1.12 kW/ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l$</tex-math></inline-formula> to 2.14 kW/ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$l$</tex-math></inline-formula> . The CFD computations are validated by extensive measurements on a modular integrated setup.