Modified Induction Machine Equivalent Circuit including Solid Shaft Eddy Currents

Abstract

The shaft eddy currents cause a significant saturation in two-pole induction machines (IMs) as they generate an opposing field and repulse the main flux, thus tightening the flux path. This results in inaccurate performance estimations with the magnetizing inductance measured in no-load conditions when the machine is loaded. This article presents a modified IM equivalent circuit considering the rotor back iron saturation effects caused by the solid shaft eddy currents using experimental measurements and recursive parameter estimation techniques. The classical equivalent circuit (CEC) parameters are determined with the standard test techniques followed by the parameter estimation of the newly introduced modified equivalent circuit (MEC) parameters. The proposed modified equivalent circuit is benchmarked with CEC and finite element analysis (FEA) simulations with and without considering eddy effects. The proposed MEC model and the FEA that consider eddy effects performed better than the other models and yielded a negligibly small error over a wide range of loading conditions. Compared to the FEA, the proposed MEC estimates the IM performance much faster, which makes it more appealing for IM performance estimations.