Opportunities and Challenges of Utilizing Additive Manufacturing Approaches in Thermal Management of Electrical Machines

Abstract

The additive manufacturing approach is considered a new manufacturing technology method and is evolving dynamically in recent years. It is advancing and achieving as the key enabling technology in a wide range of applications, from medical sciences to the aerospace and automotive industries. This novel approach opens a new path to overcome the conventional manufacturing problems and challenges by providing more design freedom, new ranges of materials, lightweight and complex geometries. According to demands metrics such as lightweight and high power density motors. This offers clear motivation to develop the advanced thermal management method with new materials and a novel additive manufacturing (AM) approach. The paper aims to provide a comprehensive review of all the attempts in various electrical machines' thermal management methods using AM method. It considers the opportunities and challenges that designers are facing while implementing these approaches. Finally, the authors make some comments/forecasts on how the AM could improve the performance and manufacturability of the future thermal management system of electrical machines.

Keywords

• Additive manufacturing (AM)
• cooling systems
• electrical machine
• manufacturing techniques
• thermal management
• three-dimensional (3-D) printing