Analysis and optimization of thermal effect for electromagnetic reciprocating linear machine

Efficient cooling method is important to improve the output performance of electric motors. This paper presents three kinds of cooling methods for electromagnetic reciprocating linear machine (ERLM), i.e., cooling with heat sinks, water cooling and forced-air cooling, and compares the cooling efficiency in quantity systematically. The result shows that heat sink is suitable for the ERLM. Then, an accurate thermal model is proposed to analyze the temperature behaviors of the ERLM with/without heat sinks. Based on the thermal model, an optimized motor structure with parabolic profile heat sink is proposed, which helps the heat dissipation evidently. The heat dissipation property is validated by numerical results, and the good agreement of the thermal model with simulation results confirms the validity of thermal model and design of linear machine.