Title: Study on the air flow characteristics of the in-wheel motor drive system of electric vehicle

Authors: Di Tan; Fan Song; Shuaishuai Liu

Addresses: School of Transportation and Vehicle Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, 12 Zhangzhou Road, Zhangdian, Zibo, 255049, China ' School of Transportation and Vehicle Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, 12 Zhangzhou Road, Zhangdian, Zibo, 255049, China ' School of Transportation and Vehicle Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, 12 Zhangzhou Road, Zhangdian, Zibo, 255049, China

Abstract: The in-wheel motor (IWM) is installed in the wheels. The air-flow field around the IWM shows strong time-varying and non-linearity with the wheel rolling speed. This is quite different from the current empirical estimates. In this paper, an electric vehicle driven by IWMs is taken as the research object. Based on the development of the vehicle model, the air-flow field characteristics around the IWM and the heat dissipation coefficient of each surface of the IWM are calculated and obtained at different vehicle velocities. The results show the distribution trend of the flow field on each surface is basically the same when the vehicle runs at different velocities. The air-flow velocity on each surface increases linearly with the vehicle velocity, and the velocity difference on each surface is larger. The results show the highest and average velocity of each surface, from large to small: left cover, right cover and house.

Keywords: in-wheel motor drive system; electric vehicle; air-flow field characteristics; heat dissipation coefficient; vehicle velocity; computational fluid dynamics model; near surface air velocity; maximum flow rate; vehicle external flow field; thermal analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVSMT.2022.126967

International Journal of Vehicle Systems Modelling and Testing, 2022 Vol.16 No.1, pp.25 - 39

Received: 02 Mar 2020
Accepted: 02 Jul 2020
Published online: 15 Nov 2022 *

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