Enhanced Ventilation and Thermal Performance by Skewed Through Holes on Rotor Yoke in Forced Air-Cooled Permanent Magnet Wind Generators

To enhance the ventilation and thermal performance of forced air-cooled permanent magnet synchronous wind generators (PMSWGs), this paper proposes a novel ventilation structure consisting of skewed through radial holes on the rotor yoke. 3-D coupled fluid-thermal computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models are developed for this study. The electromagnetic losses are considered as the heat source and appropriate boundary conditions are determined. Utilizing the CFD method, the fluid and temperature fields of generators with various rotor structures are computed. The simulation results show that the proposed through holes can reduce pressure loss and temperature of the winding significantly. Additionally, the influence of the hole structural parameters on the ventilation and electromagnetic performance is investigated.