Patent ID: 7414339

Claim:
A vehicular rotating electrical machine apparatus comprising: a rotating electrical machine including a shaft rotatably supported by a pair of brackets having a suction hole at an end face and an exhaust hole at an outer periphery, a rotor disposed in the pair of brackets, fixed to the shaft, having a field winding mounted to an inside, and having cooling fans mounted to both end faces, and an armature fixed to the pair of brackets at an outer periphery of the rotor to surround the rotor and including an armature iron core on which an armature winding is wound, and an inverter unit which converts DC power of a battery into AC power, supplies the AC power to the armature winding and causes the rotor to generate rotating power, or converts AC power generated in the armature winding into DC power and charges the battery, the inverter unit including an inverter module having plural switching elements and at least a field current control device for controlling the field current or a control device for controlling switching operations of the plural switching elements, wherein the inverter unit has a substantially hollow cylindrical shape or hollow polygonal prism shape and a heat sink constructed with plural heat radiating fins formed of metal material in at least one part of an inner peripheral surface or an anti-bracket side end face or an outer peripheral surface, the inverter module and at least the field current control device or the control device are mounted on the heat sink and a thermal conduction blocking portion is provided such that part of the heat sink on which the inverter module is mounted and the part of the heat sink on which the field current control device or the control device is mounted are not thermally influenced by each other, covered by a cover fixed to either one of the outer end faces of the paired brackets integrally and having a suction hole in the end face in an axis direction thereof, and disposed to cause cooling air sucked through the suction hole of the cover in the axial direction by the cooling fan to cool the heat radiating fins before cooling of the rotating electrical machine.