Halla Visteon Climate Control (Czechia)

Hybrid Electric Vehicles(HEVs) have seriously come into prevalence recently as car manufacturers and consumers have become more aware of the environmental and economic problems of conventional vehicles. For the alternative power-train and battery cooling systems in HEVs, an effective thermal management system is required, and many automakers are interested in using Brushless DC(BLDC) motors for cooling fans for the overall traction unit's performance and energy saving capability. This paper presents the development status of BLDC motors as major parts of the power-train, i.e. the engine cooling and battery cooling fans of HEVs. A design that uses BLDC motors for the power-train and each battery cooling fan, is successfully implemented through using electro-magnetic analysis, and prototype BLDC motors are examined. As experimental results, the BLDC motors achieved an efficiency of 85% as engine cooling fans and 72% as a battery thermal management fan motor. The electric cogging noise is significantly reduced by changing the skew of the slot pitch angle and optimizing the magnetic shape.