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The rotating heat pipe (RHP) technology is revisited in the context of finding a suitable thermal management solution for the advanced electrical machines such as switched reluctance and permanent magnet types. These machines, with potential applications involving direct mounting to gas turbine main shaft, have very high operating speeds and rotor thermal loads requiring new research studies on the use of RHP technology. The RHP literature data of the 1970's and 1980's are mostly limited to low speeds and off-axis mode tests. In this paper, results of a stainless steel - water on-axis RHP are presented. Also, potential application areas are identified.

Rotating Heat Pipe (RHP) technolog y is being developed for high speed (>20 krpm) regimes of electric motor/generator cooling. The motivation for this research is the potential application of the high speed RHPs for the thermal management of advanced rotating electrical machines. The passive nature and relatively simple features of this device are attractive for the removal of waste heat from the rotors of electric machines. Interesting air-cooling experimental results of two high speed RHPs designed, fabricated and tested at AFRL are presented here. Emphasis is made on external heat removal concepts useful for cooling the RHP condenser in order to be successful in promoting this technology to real world problems.