Power Loss and Thermal Analysis for High-Power High-Speed Permanent Magnet Machines

For high-speed permanent magnet machines (HSPMMs), the permanent magnet (PM) is more likely to suffer irreversible demagnetization because the heat dissipation is serious in the HSPMMs, especially for the high-power machines. This paper focuses on the comprehensive research results on the power loss and thermal characteristic for a high-power HSPMM. First, the power loss at the rated load is investigated by finite-element analysis. Then, the temperature distribution of four cooling schemes is compared by the electromagnetic-thermal iteration calculation. The effect of different parameters on thermal behavior is obtained to reduce rotor temperature, which includes an examination of the axial flow duct, cooling medium, sleeve thickness, and sleeve thermal conductivity. Finally, an improved loss separation method is employed to obtain the loss distribution from the measured total loss, and the comprehensive experiments are implemented based on one HSPMM prototype (800 kW, 15 000 rpm) to verify the related theoretical analysis.