Transient cooling effect analyses for a permanent-magnet synchronous motor with phase-change-material packaging

•A paraffin based casing for the cooling of actuator motor was proposed.•The working time of the motor can be prolonged with this paraffin-based casing.•The motor’s peak temperature can be decreased during the period working modes.•Bigger quality and higher melting rate of paraffin lead to better cooling effect.•The melting point of the paraffin affects the thermal control performance greatly.

Permanent-magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) are widely involved in more-electric aircrafts and all-electric aircrafts. But the cooling strategy of the PMSM is still a challenge for the designers. This paper proposed a novel thermal management approach with phase change material (PCM) for a PMSM applied in the actuator systems of aircraft. A simplified 3D model of the PMSM with a special casing packaged by paraffin-PCM was built. With the finite element method, the impact of paraffin cavity configurations and the paraffin types on the transient cooling effect of the casings have been simulated and analyzed under conditions of various heat load duty cycles and different ambient temperatures. The results suggest that, by replacing the convectional motor casing with this paraffin-based enclosure, the effective time for the PMSM temperature control could be prolonged by approximate 32.7% when the motor works under a continuous mode, and the peak temperature of the PMSM could be decreased evidently when the PMSM operates under a periodic mode.