Electromagnetic linear actuators (ELAs) may be confronted with unsatisfactory performance when subjected to overheating. Therefore, it is significant to clarify its thermal characteristics and design the thermal performance requirements. A thermal analysis method based on multiphysics coupling model was presented, which uses the non-simplified loss distribution as the heat source to calculate the temperature field, adjusts the material properties by temperature, and considers the interaction between motion (including impact) and loss. More importantly, an improved universal equivalent winding to satisfy the condition of real compact concentrated winding was developed. Finally, the validity of this approach was verified through the experiment, and the regularity of temperature was summarized. The results show that the error of simulation and experiment is less than 6% and the permissible continuous operation frequency is no more than 30 Hz. The approach proposed in this paper can be employed not only to the ELA, but also to the design and analysis a wide range of electromagnetic machines.
