Thermal Design and Analysis of Oil-Spray-Cooled In-Wheel Motor Using a Two-Phase Computational Fluid Dynamics Method

Abstract

In-wheel motors for new energy vehicles are close to the brake, which results in a high ambient temperature. Thus, there is a high demand for cooling systems. This paper designs an oil-spray-cooled system based on the flat structural characteristics of an in-wheel motor. A computational fluid dynamics method with a two-phase volume-of-fluid model is applied to simulate the transient process of oil spraying from nozzles onto the stator carrier and then dripping to the end windings. The spatially distributed fluid interfaces with location and shape fidelity are derived. Considering the big difference of thermal inertia between the motor solid and oil fluid, the mixed timescale method is applied to calculate the temperature fields of the fluid and solid. Finally, a prototype is fabricated and tested to verify the proposed oil-cooling system and simulation method.