Testing with active cooling & lubrication system

With this infrastructure we can test & evaluate several novel cooling/sealing & lubrication concepts in powertrains. Furthermore, we offer flexible oil & water&glycol circuits which can be used to test & evaluate several novel cooling & lubrication architectures for your powertrains or components (motor(s), gearbox, inverter, etc.).

 

Location: Flanders Make - Leuven

active system for cooling and lubrication

Technical specifications

Scope

  • Feasibility studies, prototyping & testing of novel thermal and lubrication concepts in electrical powertrains (e.g. motor(s); gearbox; inverter)

Specifications

  • Temperature conditioning via cooling (2x60kW) & heating power (2x16kW)
  • Several thermal/lubrication architectural liquid circuit choices (parallel/serial)
  • Several fluid circuits (Oil & Water&Glycol circuits)
  • Several circuit measurements (temperature; flow rate; pressure; density)
  • Rapid prototype platform for temperature conditioning; thermal load emulation & active cooling & lubrication control strategies (Simulink; Speedgoat)

Compatible equipment

Feasibility study of oil jet cooling

This is a slow motion video of a oil jet impinging to a motor coil embedded in a transparent motor version of an industrial prototype. Several challenges have been identified wrt oil jet cooling:

  1. oil jets are impinging the coils in an uncertain way (e.g. sometimes angled and not on the location from the design phase)
  2. oil jets are splashing in an uncertain way (e.g. multiple splashing jets)
  3. the oil splash & not splashing situation can sudden change due to slight oil temperature; oil flow variations

Furthermore, the oil will enter more/less into the air gap leading to high friction losses which is another challenge to solve. Apart from this feasibility study, the thermal performance & power density gain (~50%) vs. a water jacket cooled industrial motor have been studied. For more details, read the linked paper: Schlimpert et al 2020 - Experimental & Modelling Study of Advanced Direct Coil Cooling Methods in a Switched Reluctance Motor

Are you confronted with such novel cooling & sealing challenges? Get in touch, we are happy to help you.

What do we offer?

  • (Multiple-)motor, gearbox & inverter oil/ water glycol cooling & lubrication testing
  • Novel motor cooling design testing
  • Novel sealing design testing
  • Active cooling & lubrication control strategy testing
  • Oil degradation monitoring

Downloads

Download an overview here:
Active system for cooling and lubrication test rig - overview
Download

More information?

Are you also confronted with such novel cooling & sealing challenges? Feel free to get in touch!

Contact us