Air flow analysis of 20 hp three phase induction motor

The present work deals with steady state air flow analysis of electric motor having 20 hp rating running at 1450 rpm. The motor is being used to run the belt pull system to drive the exhaust fan in the industry. Air flow analysis of electric motor is carried out to predict temperature distribution over the motor. The modeling of the complete motor is done in CATIA. Meshing of whole geometry is done in ICEM CFD14.5. Results are obtained using FLUENT. In this research only copper losses and iron losses are taken into consideration based on the output obtained from electrical simulation software. The copper and iron losses are found out from electromagnetic analysis using Motorsolve software. Losses are treated as heat source or input to find out temperature distribution. To improve the accuracy, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis is performed by considering the air flow around casing and fins and thermal generation due to the losses. It is observed that there is a significant rise in temperature on casing and on fins for 30 °C ambient temperature.