Refine Your Search

Search Results

Technical Paper

A CFD-Based Numerical Evaluation, Assessment and Optimization of Conjugate Heat Transfer for Aerodynamic Cooling of a Wheel-Hub-Motors in Micro-Mobility Vehicles

2023-04-11
2023-01-0760
Micro-mobility vehicles such as electric scooters and bikes are increasingly used for urban transportation; their designs usually trade off performance and range. Addressing thermal and cooling issues in such vehicles could enhance performance, reliability, life, and range. Limited packaging space within the wheels precludes the use of complex cooling systems that would also increase the cost and complexity of these mass-produced wheel motors. The present study begins by evaluating the external aerodynamics of the scooter to characterise the airflow conditions near the rotating wheel; then, a steady-state conjugate heat transfer model of a commercially available wheel hub motor (500W) is created using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, StarCCM+. The CAD model of the motor used for this analysis has an external rotor permanent magnet (PM) brushless DC topology.
X