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Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Electrical Machines Paper ID 781

Modelling of the closed rotor slot effects in the


induction motor equivalent circuit
Aldo Boglietti, Senior Member IEEE, Andrea Cavagnino, Member IEEE, Mario Lazzari
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, Politecnico di Torino
Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129, Torino, ITALY
aldo.boglietti@polito.it, andrea.cavagnino@polito.it, mario.lazzari@polito.it

Abstract- In induction motors with closed rotor slots the 0.30


enclosure upper part of the rotor slot saturates during the V LINE / VRATED
machine operations, involving an additional non-linearity in the 0.25
machines behaviors. A simple locked rotor test gives prominence
to this phenomenon. In fact, in this test the supply voltage versus 0.20
adsorbed current characteristic is not linear. In the paper a
single-phase induction motor equivalent circuit suitable to take 0.15
into account the effects due to the rotor wedge saturation is
proposed. Complete theoretical details about the new equivalent 0.10
circuit are reported together with experimental validation.
0.05
Keywords: induction motors, equivalent circuit, closed rotor slot, I LINE / IRATED
saturation effects and parameter identification.
0.00
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Applied voltage vs. adsorbed current during the locked rotor test for a
In small and medium power induction motors, closed rotor 11 kW, 400 V, 21.5 A, 4 poles, 50 Hz, TEFC induction motor with closed rotor
slots.
slots represent the typical solution, in particular when
aluminum die cast squirrel cages have to be realized. This 0.40
V LINE / VRATED
solution provides other advantages, such as a simpler rotor
0.35
diameter turning and, in some cases, lower spatial harmonic Closed slots

content in the airgap magnetic flux, resulting in less stator 0.30

current harmonic content, noise and iron losses in the stator 0.25

teeth tips [1]. 0.20


Anyway, during the machine operations, the rotor slot Open slots
0.15
bridges saturate due to the current inside the rotor slots. Taking
into account the very small radial thickness of the bridges, 0.10

small current values are sufficient to saturate the wedges and in 0.05
I LINE / IRATED
these conditions the slots can be considered equivalent to an 0.00
open ones. 0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0

It is important to remember that the closed slot rotors have Fig. 2. Applied voltage vs. adsorbed current during the locked rotor test
been already investigated in literature. For example, interesting for two twin 100 W, 60 V, 6 A, 2 poles, 530 Hz induction motors with
researches are reported in [1]-[4]. In these references, the closed and open rotor slot.
influence of the rotor slot enclosure is analyzed from the point
of view of the slot-harmonic fields present in the airgap (using
analytical considerations and/or finite element method II. LOCKED ROTOR TESTS OF CLOSED ROTOR SLOT
INDUCTION MACHINES
simulations). To the best of the author’s knowledge, an
equivalent circuit approach including the effects due to the The saturation of the slots bridges can be put in evidence
rotor wedge saturation has never been reported in the literature with a simple locked rotor test. In Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 two
before. examples are shown. The locked rotor supply voltage versus
Aim of the paper is to describe the magnetic saturation of the the adsorbed current characteristic for an industrial Totally
slot wedges as a “global” effect rather than a “local” one. As it Enclosed Fan Cooled (TEFC) induction motor with closed
will be explained in the sections II and III, it is possible to use rotor slots is shown in Fig. 1. Due to the saturation of the slot
a suitable voltage generator connected in series with the rotor wedges, this characteristic results not linear.
impedance for including the described phenomena. It is Fig. 2 reports the same values for two twin high-speed
interesting to observe that the amplitude of this voltage induction motors with the same stator and rotor (as number of
generator can be either calculated on the base of the motor rotor slots and rotor slot shape), but with open and closed rotor
design data or, if available, directly measured on the machine. slots.

978-1-4244-1736-0/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE 1


Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Electrical Machines
VS stator phase voltage;
VLocked VLocked ILocked ZL IS stator phase current;
RS stator phase resistance;
Rir equivalent iron losses resistance;
ZL ILocked VLocked V0 Xℓs total stator leakage reactance;
Xm magnetizing reactance (fundamental component);
V0 X’ℓr total rotor leakage reactance (reported to the stator);
ILocked ILocked R’r rotor cage resistance (reported to the stator);
s1 slip (with respect to the fundamental airgap flux
Fig. 3. Approximation of the voltage vs. adsorbed current during the locked density spatial harmonic);
rotor test for induction motor with closed rotor slots (ZL is the equivalent phase
impedance in locked rotor conditon).
V0 equivalent phase voltage source (reported to the
stator);
Rs Xls X’lr R’r /s1 Ir rotor current (reported to the stator).
Is
IR In the present study, only the fundamental component of the
airgap flux density is considered. From the equivalent circuit
Vs Xm Rir V0
point of view, the modeling of the spatial harmonic effect has
been analyzed by the authors in [7].
The main advantage of this approach consists on the fact that
Fig. 4. Proposed single-phase induction motor equivalent circuit. the discussed saturation effect is represented with the constant
circuit elements X’ℓr and V0 non-depending on the rotor current
It is possible to observe that the voltage versus current value. With reference to Fig.4, it is important to remark that the
characteristic is linear for the machine with open rotor slots, rotor resistance R’r and the rotor leakage reactance X’ℓr are still
while it is not linear for the other one. For the closed rotor slot variable elements due to the skin effect in the rotor bars, while
motor, the non-linearity is well evident due to the relatively the magnetizing reactance Xm and the equivalent iron losses Rir
high value of the slot bridge radial thickness. are variable parameters due to the non-linearity of the magnetic
In order to justify this phenomenon the following laminations. It is possible to take into account these not-
considerations can be done. For small rotor current values, the linearity in the parameter definitions as reported in [8] and [9].
rotor slot leakage inductance is high because the slot leakage
flux passes through the magnetic slot wedge. When the rotor IV. ANALYTICAL DETERMINATION OF V0
current increases, the slot bridges saturate and the rotor leakage The amplitude of the voltage V0 can be calculated on the
inductance rapidly decreases [5]. From the equivalent circuit basis of the design data. In saturated rotor slot bridge
point of view, this behavior can be well approximated as conditions, the flux that crosses through the slot wedge is:
shown in Fig. 3.
Fig.3 shows the constant voltage generator V0 that describes ∆λ max = Bsat ⋅ kir ⋅ Lcore ⋅ hb (1)
a constant voltage drop due to the magnetic saturation of the where:
rotor slot bridges. Since this generator takes into account an Bsat [T] is the saturation flux density of the laminations;
inductive effect, it manages reactive power only. As a Kir [p.u.] is the lamination pack coefficient;
consequence, in the equivalent circuit the V0 voltage vector has Lcore [m] is the axial length of the magnetic core;
to be lead of π/2 the current one. In other words, this hb [m] is the radial thickness of the rotor slot bridges.
equivalent generator has to be considered as a current
dependant voltage source with respect to the vector phases. For a sinusoidal rotor current, the ∆λ(t) flux waveform can
It is important to remark that the locked rotor test allows to be approximated with a square wave because the enclosure
directly measure the amplitude of the V0 voltage generator. bridge saturation happens for small values of the rotor bar
current, as shown in Fig 5 and as well evident in Fig.1 and
III. PROPOSED EQUIVALENT CIRCUIT Fig.2. In addition, the ∆λ(t) is totally linked with the rotor bar
inside the slot.
According to the previous considerations, it is possible to
modify the classical induction motor single-phase equivalent
circuit [6] in order to take into account the magnetic saturation ∆λmax
of the slot wedges. The authors propose the circuit reported in t
Fig. 4, where the V0 voltage generator has been simply IR
connected in series at the rotor impedance. ∆λ
The meaning of the symbols reported in Fig. 4 are listed
hereafter: Fig. 5. Example of the magnetic flux waveform in the rotor slot bridges.

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Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Electrical Machines
TABLE I
10.0
Percentage errors [%] HIGH-SPEED INDUCTION MOTOR PARAMETERS BY LOCKED ROTOR TEST
7.5 (REFERENCE TEMP. = 75 °C, REFERENCE CURRENT = RATED CURRENT)
5.0
Rotor slot enclosure type Open Closed
2.5
0.0 Locked rotor phase voltage, [V] 4.30 9.52
-2.5 Locked rotor losses, [W] 30.4 32.0
4k

7.5

11

30
-5.0 Locked rotor impedance, [Ω] 0.715 1.587
W

kW

kW
Stator resistance, [Ω] 0.115 0.115

kW
-7.5
-10.0 Rotor resistance, [Ω] 0.167 0.181
Stator reactance, [Ω] 0.329 0.358
Fig. 6. Percentage errors in the V0 voltage calculation.
Rotor reactance, [Ω] 0.329 0.358
45 Equivalent phase voltage V0, [V] 0 5.05
40 V0 [V]
35
30
V. MODEL VALIDATION
25 V0 = 0.136 * f
20
R2 = 0.988 The proposed theoretical model has been applied to four
15
10 TEFC induction motors with closed rotor slots. The considered
5 Frequency [Hz] motors have been tested in locked rotor conditions, at the rated
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300
supply frequency, in order to compare the measured and
calculated values of the V0 voltage. Fig. 6 reports the obtained
Fig. 7. Amplitude of the V0 voltage versus the supply frequency for a 4 pole, percentage errors in the V0 voltage prediction for the
7.5 kW, 380 V, 17 A, 50 Hz, TEFC induction motor. considered machines. It is possible to observe that the
estimation errors are lower than ±10 %, confirming the
On the basis of these considerations, the fundamental rms goodness of the proposed approach. Several locked rotor tests
value of the voltage V0* can be calculated using (2), where V0* have been performed on the 7.5 kW TEFC motor of Fig.6,
is the value of the voltage generator referred to the rotor circuit changing the supply frequency in the range 10 Hz – 300 Hz. In
and f is the stator supply frequency. these tests, the motor has been supplied with a 40 kVA static
three-phase sinusoidal AC supply, that provides a sinusoidal
2 2 (2) waveform with a voltage total harmonic distortion less than
V0* = s1 ⋅ ω ⋅ ∆λ max = 5.66 ⋅ s1 ⋅ f ⋅ ∆λ max
π 0.1%. The measured voltage V0 as function of the supply
The amplitude ∆λmax of the bridge flux square wave can be frequency is reported in Fig.7. This result confirms a linear
evaluated assuming a saturation induction value Bsat of 1.8-2.0 dependence of V0 with the frequency, as expected by (4). As a
T in (1). consequence, locked rotor tests performed at higher supply
It is interesting to observe that the amplitude of the voltage frequency can be used to amplify the effect of the slot bridges
generator V0* depends on the actual rotor speed. As well saturation from the locked rotor voltage point of view.
known, the value of the voltage V0 can be determined reporting Through relations (1)-(4) and by the measure of the V0
the V0* value to the stator side using the coefficient (3) where voltage it is possible to estimate the thickness of the rotor slot
kw1 is stator winding coefficient (for the airgap fundamental wedge. For the 7.5 kW TEFC motor the calculation gives
spatial harmonic) and Zph is the number of the stator values of hb in the range 0.35mm - 0.39mm with respect to a
conductors in series per phase [8]. geometrical rated value of 0.4mm provided by the machine
manufacturer. Also in this case the obtained results can be
KV = k w1 ⋅ Z ph (3) considered more than satisfactory.
The two high-speed machines described in Section II have
After this operation, the amplitude of V0 doesn’t depend on been then considered in order to obtain a further model
the actual speed of the rotor. In other words, this is equivalent validation. First at all, starting from the machine design data of
to divide (2) for the slip s1 and the voltage generator V0 has to the closed rotor slot machine, the amplitude of the voltage V0
be now considered as a constant voltage source at the stator has been estimated (obtaining 5.01 V with Bsat = 1.9 T) and
supply frequency. Finally, (4) is obtained. compared with the measured value shown in Table I. In this
V* case, the agreement between the computed and measured value
V0 = KV ⋅ 0 = 5.66 ⋅ k w1 ⋅ Z ph ⋅ f ⋅ ∆λ max (4) is excellent.
s1
For the two high-speed motors the machine parameters
As explained in Section II, the equivalent voltage generator obtained by the rated frequency locked rotor test are listed in
describes an inductive phenomenon; as a consequence, the Table I. Owing to the possibility of testing two identical
phase of the V0 vector has to be defined as shown in (5). machines, one with open rotor slots and the other with closed
ones, further considerations can be done on the evaluation of
∠V0 = ∠I R + π 2 (5)
stator and rotor leakage parameters.

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Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Electrical Machines
nt convergence of the considered non linear equivalent circuit
ar e
A pp (Fig. 4) when the simulation have to be extended to high
VLocked slip values. In fact, the amplitude of the voltage V0 is
constant and the leakage reactance changes due to the skin
ua l effect only [8], [9].
Act ZL IRated
As explained in section V, for closed rotor slot machines it
Z*L IRated
is possible to obtain a more realistic estimation of the stator
V0 and rotor leakage reactance if the voltage V0 is taken into
account during the locked rotor test elaboration.
IRated ILocked
Fig. 8. Graphic procedure for the locked rotor test elaboration. VII. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper a single-phase induction motor equivalent
As well known, the locked rotor parameters have to be circuit suitable to include the saturation effect of the rotor slot
computed in rated current condition and, in order to separate bridges is proposed. Experimental evidences suggested that,
the stator and rotor leakage reactance, a fixed ratio between from the equivalent circuit point of view, it was possible to
these two reactance values are used, according to the NEMA model the magnetic saturation of the slot wedges as a “global”
motor design type [10]. For quickly evaluations, it is possible effect using a suitable voltage generator connected in series
to assume the stator leakage reactance equal to the rotor one. with the rotor impedance. Starting from this consideration, a
Even if this can be accepted for open rotor slot machines where theoretical analysis has been developed and reported in detail
the voltage V0 is zero, this assumption can lead to large errors in the paper. Locked rotor tests have been performed on
in the stator leakage reactance for closed rotor machines, as several induction motors in order to validate the model. The
sketched in Fig. 8. In fact, the standard locked rotor test good agreement between the computed and measured results
elaboration procedure considers the apparent voltage versus confirms the goodness of proposed approach. In addition, a
current characteristic (dashed line in Fig.8) and the apparent critical discussion about the elaboration procedure of the
locked rotor impedance ZL*. By this apparent value, it is locked rotor test is reported too.
possible to estimate Xℓs = X’ℓr = 0.78 Ω.
If the voltage V0 is considered in the power balance of the REFERENCES
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