The Chair of Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components (PEM) at RWTH Aachen University has launched a research project aimed at enhancing the production of cooling systems for hairpin stators in electric motors, the university announced.
The two-year initiative, named Production engineering capability of the hairpin stator process chain for processing rectangular waveguides for use in traction drives (HNTR), is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection. Munich-based electric motor developer Hyperdrives is also involved. The project seeks to adapt manufacturing processes to enable the use of rectangular waveguides, which could facilitate direct cooling of electric motors instead of the current indirect methods.
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“The thermal design of electric motors – especially if their compactness and performance are to be maintained – is one of the current challenges in electric mobility production,” said PEM Director Professor Achim Kampker. The new approach, using hollow copper conductors, would allow a cooling medium to flow through the windings, dissipating heat more efficiently. “Therefore, hollow conductors offer significant potential for increasing the efficiency and performance of electric drive machines,” added PEM project manager Till Backes.
The concept has been used in industrial generators, which have much larger rotor diameters than conventional electric motors. “Bending and contacting processes used in generator construction for the manufacture of stator windings are therefore not easily transferable to the much smaller electric motors – especially considering the strict quality requirements and high quantities demanded in the automotive sector,” Kampker noted.
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PEM is also involved in other electromobility research, including the FastCell project to improve the fast-charging capability of prismatic lithium-ion batteries and a study on the future production of solid-state batteries in Europe.