IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 46, NO.

8, AUGUST 2010

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Eddy-Current Loss and Temperature Rise in the Form-Wound Stator Winding of an Inverter-Fed Cage Induction Motor
M. J. Islam1 , H. V. Khang2 , A.-K. Repo2 , and A. Arkkio2
Corporate Research, ABB AB, Vsters, Sweden Department of Electrical Engineering, School of Science and Technology, Aalto University, Aalto FI-00076, Finland
Temperature rise of the form-wound multi-conductor stator winding of a 1250-kW cage induction motor was analyzed. Eddy currents in the winding signicantly affect the temperature rise. The eddy current was modeled using time-discretized nite-element analysis (FEA). The resistive losses in each of the bars obtained from the FEA are used as input for thermal modeling. The distance from the air gap to the topmost bar in the stator has a signicant effect on the eddy-current loss as well as temperature rise in the winding. An acceptable distance for winding design was recommended. By using magnetic slot wedges the eddy-current losses can be reduced. Index TermsEddy-current loss, form-wound stator winding, temperature rise.

I. INTRODUCTION HE eddy-current losses increase with the high-frequency harmonics of the frequency converter supply [1][4]. The loss determination has an important role in both design and use stages. The heating sources in a motor are basically the losses. The consideration of the temperature rise is necessary to study whether the motor design is suitable or not. Numerical methods have been used to compute the losses, and then analyze the temperature rise in the electrical machines in recent years [5], [6]. The hottest spot in electrical machines, especially in the winding arises usually as a consequence of the uneven current distribution because of eddy currents. Sometimes, although the overall machine temperature does not exceed the given limit, local over heating or hot spot can occur. Those unexpected local hot spots may cause a winding damage [7][9]. In this paper, the eddy-current losses in a multi-conductor stator winding of an inverter-fed cage induction machine are modeled. The time-stepping nite-element analysis (FEA) is used to estimate the losses properly from the results of the high-frequency harmonic elds in addition to the fundamental one [8], [9]. Secondly, the thermal analysis is performed on the basis of the average loss density of each stator bar. The installment of the magnetic wedges at the slot opening is studied as a simple way to reduce the eddy-current loss. As a consequence, the temperature rise of the stator winding of the motor is reduced.

winding regions. The electromagnetic eld in the multi-conductor winding is (1) reluctivity and conductivity of conductor, where magnetic vector potential, effective length of the number of bars in stator winding, the potenmotor, is dened as follows: tial difference of stator bar

The voltage equation of a bar is

(2) DC resistance of a bar of length number where function to relate between the bar and of phases, and cross-sectional area of the th bar of the winding. phase The equation of a phase is

(3) II. EDDY-CURRENT LOSS IN STATOR WINDINGS The two-dimensional (2-D) nite-element method (FEM) is used to model the eddy currents in the core region of a formwound stator winding of a cage induction machine [8], [9]. It is assumed that the eddy currents are negligible in the endManuscript received December 18, 2009; revised February 16, 2010; accepted February 18, 2010. Current version published July 21, 2010. Corresponding author: H. V. Khang (e-mail: huynh.khang@tkk.). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TMAG.2010.2044387

where number of symmetry sectors, phase current of the th phase, end-winding DC resistance of a phase, and end-winding inductance of a phase. The bar equation is strongly coupled with the eld and phase equations. The rotor cage is considered with the voltage equation of bar. A separate equation is used for the end ring to connect the parallel rotor bars. The Galerkin method is applied to the basic (1)(3) to obtain the discretized system of equations. The time dependence of the equations is discretized using backward Euler method. The nonlinear system of equation is solved using Newton-Raphson method at every time step [8][10].

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The stator resistive loss includes the resistive loss of stator and the end-winding resistive loss . The eddy-curbar is the difference between the total resistive loss rent loss and DC resistive loss (4) (5)

(6) (7) where current density, phase current in stator phase is the DC resistances of a phase. III. THERMAL ANALYSIS OF STATOR WINDING A. Relevant Equation The heat conduction of the solid conductor bars in the stator winding at the steady state obeys Gauss law [11] (8) power loss density, thermal conductivity. where A 2-D nite element model is built to consider the heat ow in the stator slot. The temperature over a solution domain solved from (8) shows the thermal distribution in the stator winding. There are many heating sources in electromechanic devices [12]. This study only focuses on the stator winding of cage induction motor, and the heating sources in this analysis are the average resistive losses in each of the bars of the stator winding. B. Boundary Conditions Two types of boundary condition are used in this study. For the iron sides, the temperature is set to a prescribed value at the boundaries [11]. The convection of insulation-inside air or slot wedge- inside air can be represented by a convection condition (9) heat transfer coefcient, the air temperature.
Fig. 1. Bars in the stator slot: (a) nite-element discretization and (b) dimensions and numbering of the stator bars in a slot.

[14]. The nite-element discretization of the stator slot is presented in Fig. 1(a), and the dimensions and the numbering of the stator bars are presented in Fig. 1(b). The stator bars are systematically transposed to reduce the effect of the circulating currents. The PWM supply is obtained by applying sinus-triangle comparison. A third harmonic is injected into the sinusoidal modulating signal to increase the fundamental harmonic and to reduce the harmonic contents from the PWM supply [15], [16]. The switching frequency (the triangle carrier frequency) of the PWM supply is 2 kHz for the simulations. The details could be found in [9]. A. Eddy-Current Loss The radial distance of the stator bars from the inner surface of the stator, i.e., the outer surface of the air gap, is one of the very important design parameters regarding losses, especially the eddy-current loss of the stator winding. The radial position of the coil sides is changed by increasing the distance from the , from inner surface of the stator to the top of the stator bar, 0.8 mm to 11.8 mm by increasing the stator slot height from 73.0 mm to 84 mm. The outer diameter of the machine is increased to keep the thickness of the yoke constant. Changing the geometry changes the leakage ux. The input voltage is adjusted to keep the fundamental harmonic of the air-gap ux density constant (0.711 T). The variation of the AC resistive loss which is decomposed are preinto DC resistive and eddy-current losses against sented in Fig. 2. The variation of AC resistive losses mainly comes from the variation of eddy-current loss as the DC resistive loss remains almost constant. Local hot spots in the stator windings of electrical machine arise usually due to the higher eddy currents in a particular bar [7][9]. In Fig. 3, the distribution of the resistive losses is premm. sented according to the bar index in the slots for It can be seen from the loss distribution that because of the eddy

IV. RESULTS A PWM inverter fed three-phase cage induction motor 690 V, 1250 kW is used to consider the eddy-current loss and thermal distribution in the stator winding. To model the eddy currents in the stator winding, every bar of the winding is modeled separately. A bar is dened as that part of a strand that is embedded in a slot. The bars are connected in series in particular strand. There are 3 parallel strands which are formed to make an effective turn. There are 6 effective turns, which results in 18 bars per slot. A second-order nite-element discretization is used to model the electrical machine. The stator bar is discretized detailed enough to consider the eddy-current loss accurately [13],

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Fig. 2. AC and DC stator resistive losses at different radial positions.

Fig. 5. Temperature-rise distribution in the stator slot at h

= 2:8 mm.

The radial high-frequency uxes can be guided to the stator teeth by using a magnetic wedge in the slot opening. It is an important way to reduce the eddy-current loss caused by the radial main and high-frequency uxes in the stator winding. The method presented above is also valid for analyzing random-wound windings that are commonly used in small machines. However, a detailed nite-element mesh for such a winding would require a lot of computation.
Fig. 3. Average resistive loss distribution according to the bar index in the slots h : mm.

= 58

Fig. 4. Variation of eddy-current losses with and without magnetic slot wedges at different radial positions.

currents the rst bar is more critical. Although the overall loss can be acceptable, this high local loss density can cause local hot spots. To see the effect of the magnetic slot wedges on the eddy-current loss, non-conducting, non-linear magnetic slot wedges are used to close the slot openings. The thickness of the magnetic is increased slot wedges is varied from 0.5 to 5 mm when from 0.8 to 5.8 mm. The thickness of wedges 5 mm is kept conis larger than 5.8 mm. The variation of eddy-curstant when rent loss with and without magnetic slot wedges is compared in Fig. 4 for different radial positions.

B. Temperature Rise The temperature-rise analysis is performed by using public domain software FEMM [11]. The volumetric heat capacity of conducting bars is 3 MJ/m /K. The volume heat generation is calculated from the average AC resistive-loss density in each stator bar. These values for insulation and magnetic slot wedge are set to zero. For simplication, the temperature of iron sides is prescribed to zero (Fixed Temperature in FEMM). The inside air temperature for convection boundary is also set to zero. For the purpose to check the temperature difference, the initial temperature set to zero is reasonable. The heat transfer coefcient to inside air is 35 W/m /K. The thermal conductivities of the insulation layer and magnetic wedge are 0.25 W/mK and 0.4 W/mK, respectively, while the thermal conductivity of stator bar copper depends slightly on the temperature. Fig. 5 shows the temperature distribution in a stator slot starting from the bottom to the opening of the slot. The hottest spot is in the bars closest to the slot opening. This region needs to be carefully considered when designing the stator winding of a large machine. The temperature-rise distributions in the stator slot without and with the magnetic wedge are shown in Fig. 6. The maximum temperature of the stator without magnetic wedges is about 21.6 K, while that of the stator with magnetic slot wedges installed is 16.9 K. Fig. 7 shows the maximum and average temperature rise in the stator slot according to the radial position of stator bars. The IEC 60034-1 [17] standard species for motors within the power range 2005000 kW that the highest average temperature allowed for a class 155 insulation is 145 C. The maximum temperature within the insulation can be 155 C. This

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in the stator winding are modeled and taken into account in the eld equation. The eddy-current loss strongly depends on the distance from air gap to the stator bars. The magnetic wedges installed at the slot opening make it possible to reduce the eddycurrent loss as well as the temperature rise in the stator windings. The goodness of winding design for an inverter-fed large induction machines can be pre-examined via a coupled electromagnetic and thermal analysis. REFERENCES
[1] T. Okitsu, D. Matsuhashi, and K. Muramatsu, Method for evaluating the eddy current loss of a permanent magnet in a PM motor driven by an inverter power supply using coupled 2-D and 3-D nite element analyses, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 45, no. 10, pp. 45744577, Oct. 2009. [2] E. N. Hilderbrand and H. Roehrdanz, Losses in three-phase induction machines fed by PWM converters, IEEE Trans. Energy Convers., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 228233, Sep. 2001. [3] A. Arkkio, Finite element analysis of cage induction motor fed by static frequency converters, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 551554, Arp. 1990. [4] J. J. Lee, Y. K. Kim, H. Nam, K. H. Ha, J. P. Hong, and D. H. Hwang, Loss distribution of three-phase induction motor fed by pulsewidthmodulated inverter, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 762765, Mar. 2004. [5] S. Inamura, T. Sakai, and K. Sawa, A temperature rise analysis of switched reluctance motor due to the core and copper loss by FEM, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 15541557, May 2003. [6] J. Faiz, B. Ganji, C. E. Carstensen, K. A. Kasper, and R. W. De Doncker, Temperature rise analysis of switched reluctance motors due to electromagnetic losses, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 45, no. 7, pp. 29272934, Jul. 2009. [7] V. Ostovic, Three-dimensional eddy current computation in conductors of electric machines, in Proc. 36th IEEE IAS Annu. Meeting, 2001, vol. 2, no. 30, pp. 737744. [8] M. J. Islam and A. Arkkio, Time-stepping nite element analysis of eddy currents in the form-wound stator winding of a cage induction motor supplied from a sinusoidal voltage source, IET Electr. Power Appl., vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 256265, 2008. [9] M. J. Islam and A. Arkkio, Effects of pulse-width-modulated supply voltage on eddy currents in the form-wound stator winding of a cage induction motor, IET Electr. Power Appl., vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 5058, 2009. [10] A. Arkkio, Analysis of induction motors based on the numerical solution of the magnetic eld and circuit equations, in Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica, Electrical Engineering Series No. 59. Helsinki, Finland, p. 97, 1987 [Online]. Available: http://lib.tkk./Diss/198X/ isbn951226076X/ [11] D. Meeker, Finite Element Method Magnetics, 2009, Version 4.2, Users Manual. [12] J. Fouladgar and E. Chauveau, The inuence of the harmonics on the temperature of electrical machines, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 16441647, May 2005. [13] M. J. Islam and A. Arkkio, Finite-element discretisation for analysing eddy currents in the form-wound stator winding of a cage induction motor, in CD Proc. 14th Int. Symp. Electromagn. Fields in Mechatronics, Electr. Electron. Eng., Arras, France, Sep. 1012, 2009, pp. 6. [14] M. J. Islam, Finite-element Analysis of Eddy Currents in the Form-wound Multi-conductor Windings of Electrical Machines. Espoo, 2010, p. 144 [Online]. Available: http://lib.tkk./Diss/2010/ isbn9789522482556/, Available:, TKK Dissertation 211 [15] D. A. Grant, M. Stevens, and J. A. Houldsworth, The effect of the word length on the harmonic contentsof the microprocessor-based PWM waveform generators, IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 218225, Jan. 1985. [16] D. G. Holmes and T. A. Lipo, Pulse width modulation for power converters principle and practice, in IEEE Series on Power Engineering. Hoboken: Wiley, 2003, vol. 724. [17] International Standard, Rotating Electrical MachinesPart1: Rating and Performance p. 137, 2004, IEC 60034-1.

Fig. 6. Temperature-rise distribution in the stator slot at h

= 5:8 mm.

Fig. 7. Maximum and average temperature rise in the stator slot.

gives a 10 degree difference between the maximum and average temperatures. The presence of magnetic wedges helps reducing the maximum temperature rise or the temperature difference. The radial position has to be larger than 5.8 mm for fully open stator slot. By using the magnetic slot wedges in the slot opening this distance can be reduced to 4.8 mm. As a consequence, the machine diameter can be reduced by 2.0 mm while staying within the acceptable temperature range in case of without or with the magnetic slot wedges installed. The volume of stator winding does not need to be increased to satisfy the temperature constraints in the stator. V. CONCLUSION Thermal analysis of the stator winding is performed and the local hot spot is predicted by using 2-D FEA. The resistive losses are used as the heat sources of the thermal analysis. To consider the resistive losses more accurately, the eddy currents