A Study on the Parameters Influencing Insulation Coating on Copper Based Electrical Windings Fabricated Via Additive manufacturing

The electrification of transportation is essential in reducing global CO 2 emissions in pursuit of Carbon Net Zero. A key research challenge is identifying methods of improving the power density (kW/kg) of electrical machines to meet the industrial need predicted by the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) and Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI). In general, power density is ultimately thermally limited, where the internally generated losses of the electrical machine (winding, core, mechanical and aerodynamic loss) act to raise the temperature of the stator and windings above the temperature limit of the insulation materials being used. Hence, the electrical insulation system is in the critical path to higher performance electrical machines. A promising power density improvement approach is to exploit the geometric freedom of metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) to reduce the, often dominant, winding loss component and to enable direct thermal management of the windings by embedding cooling channels or other structures [1] , Fig. 1 . This allows an electrical machine to run at a higher power for a given temperature.