Reluctance generator/motor cooling

The method of optimizing a tradeoff between viscous cooling fluid losses and desired cooling effect in a high speed dynamoelectric machine of the salient pole reluctance type, said method comprising the steps of:

• interrupting a machine-induced flow of said viscous cooling fluid from end regions said reluctance dynamoelectric machine into a stator-surrounded axially extending rotor element space of said machine by disposing rotor carried, radially extending, disc-like, rotor end-shielding fluid flow barrier elements adjacent opposed ends of said rotor;
• interspersing additional of said rotor carried, radially extending, disc like, fluid-flow barrier elements between selected lengths of stacked laminations along said axially extending rotor element of said machine;
• providing axial fluid-flow-limiting apertures of selected size and viscous cooling fluid-flow capacity in said fluid flow barrier members in annular interpole spaces between said rotor salient poles;
• locating a plurality of stator-internal to stator-external fluid-communicating apertures at selected axial and radial locations along said stator;
• and
• adjusting size and fluid flow capacities of said flow apertures in each of said radially extending rotor carried, radially extending, disc like fluid flow barrier elements in response to maintaining a selected safe operating temperature profile for said rotor and stator elements under a selected representative set of machine operating conditions.

Reluctance motor/generator apparatus comprising the combination of:

• a motor/generator torque-communicating rotatable shaft member disposed along a central axis of a motor/generator stator member;
• a salient pole magnetically conductive rotor member extending lengthwise along said torque-communicating rotatable shaft member within said stator member and rigidly connecting with said rotatable shaft member in a rotor centrodial region;
• said rotor member having a first substantially circular periphery of a first diameter around an outer extremity of said salient poles and a second periphery of a second smaller diameter in annular segment interpole regions located intermediate said salient poles;
• said rotor member being comprised of a plurality of electromagnetic loss-minimizing thin rotor lamination members held captive on said rotatable shaft member;
• said rotor member including a plurality of rotor temperature-controlling thermal elements of substantially said first diameter circular periphery configuration and selected thickness, disposed at opposed rotor ends and intermediate adjacent rotor laminations at selected axial space intervals along said rotor and said rotatable shaft member;
• said intermediate rotor temperature-controlling thermal elements having exposed annular segment interpole regions located intermediate said rotor salient poles;
• said rotor temperature-controlling thermal elements also having coolant fluid axial flow-communicating apertures of selected cross-sectional area disposed in said exposed annular segment interpole regions thereof;
• and
• a plurality of coolant fluid escape apertures disposed along said stator member at axially selected locations intermediate said rotor temperature-controlling thermal elements.