Analysis of Advanced Passive Heatsinks For Electrical Machines Enabled by Additive Manufacturing

This paper presents numerical models of several different natural convection based heatsink designs for an additively manufactured switched reluctance machine. The proposed heatsink designs incorporate geometries that have improved thermal performance but are difficult to produce with conventional methods, making them ideal options for additive manufacturing. The heatsinks are compared to a traditional longitudinal plate fin heatsink model with a heat transfer coefficient of 0.159 W/K. The highest performing proposed heatsink model achieves a heat transfer coefficient of 0.184 W/K, showing that additively manufactured passive heatsinks can provide significantly improved cooling for totally enclosed non-ventilated machines.