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INTRODUCTION TO

ELECTRIC DRIVES
Unit 5
Control of AC Drives
Unit - 5 Mayank Goyal
Introduction
D.C. drive has certain drawbacks. Most of them are due to
dc motors.
Need regular maintenance
They are tailor made hence not readily available for replacements.
Bulky in size.
Due to commutator sparking, they are simply not suitable in
hazardous areas like chemical and petrochemical plants or in
mines.
For ratings above 500 KW, manufacture of d.c. motor poses
problems.

With these serious limitations, d.c. drive systems have
become unsuitable for energy saving applications.
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Intro (Contd)
A.C. drive systems use the a.c. motor as the driven
element either induction or synchronous type.
Induction motors, particularly squirrel cage type
induction motors, have a number of advantages when
compared with d.c. motors.
Some of them are ruggedness; lower maintenance, better
reliability, lower cost, weight, volume, and inertia; higher
efficiency and the ability to operate in explosive
environments.
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Basic Principle of Operation
Approximately, 60% of the worlds consumption of
electrical energy passes through the winding of squirrel-
cage induction motors in the range of 1 to 125 HP.
A three phase induction motor consists of a balanced
distributed three phase winding on the stator. These
windings are displaced by 120
o
in space with respect to
each other.
The squirrel cage rotor consists of a stack of insulated
laminations. It has electrically conducting bars inserted
through it in axial direction which are electrically shorted
at each end of the rotor by end rings, thus producing a
cage like structure.
The squirrel cage motor are simple, rugged and have
low cost.
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Torque Speed Characteristics of a Polyphase
Induction Motor
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Squirrel Cage Rotor Design
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Design Class A: normal starting torque, normal starting
current, low slip
This design usually has a low resistance single cage rotor.
It emphasizes good running performance.
The class A motor is the basic standard design in sizes below
about 7.5 and above about 200 HP.
Design Class B: normal starting torque, low starting
current, low slip
This design has approximately the same starting torque as the
class A design but with 75 % of the starting current.
This design is common in 7.5 to 200 HP range of sizes.
It is used for substantially constant speed drives where starting
torque requirements are not severe, such as in driving fans,
blowers, pumps and machine tools.
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Design Class C: high starting torque, low starting current
This design uses a double cage rotor with higher rotor resistance
than the class B design.
Result is higher starting torque with low starting current but
somewhat lower running efficiency and higher slip then classes A
and B designs
Typical applications are in driving compressors and conveyers.
Design Class D: high starting torque, high slip
This design usually has a simple cage, high resistance rotor.
It produces very high starting torque at low starting current.
It principle uses are for driving intermittent loads involving high
accelerating duty and for driving high impact loads such as punch
presses and shears.
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Speed Control of Induction Motors
The basic speed control methods are:
Stator voltage control
Variable frequency control
Rotor Resistance control
Slip power recovery scheme
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Rotor Resistance control
The methods of induction motor control describes earlier,
control the motor from the stator. Hence, they are
applicable to both squirrel cage and wound rotor
motors.
The wound rotor motor has number of disadvantages
compared to squirrel cage motor such as high cost,
weight, volume and inertia, and frequent maintenance due
to the presence of brushes and slip sings. However, the
control of a wound rotor from the rotor allows cheaper
drives to be obtained for a few specific applications.
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In a wound rotor motor, the improved starting
performance is obtained by connecting an external
resistance in series with the rotor winding.
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Chopper controlled wound rotor induction motor
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Slip Power Recovery Scheme
In the rotor resistance control, the slip power is dissipated
in the resistance and this effectively reduces the efficiency
of the motor. However, instead of dissipating it in the
resistance, the slip power can be conveniently returned to
the mains or used in useful manner making the drive
more efficient.
This is achieved by means of slip power recovery
schemes known as Kramer and Scherbius Drives.
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Scherbius Drives
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Static Kramer Drives
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Synchronous motor drives
A synchronous machine is the one in which alternating
current flows in the armature winding and d.c. excitation is
supplied to the field winding. The armature winding is on
the stator and is usually a three phase winding. The field
winding is on the rotor. The speed of synchronous
machine under steady state conditions is proportional to
the frequency of the current in the armature. The
magnetic field created by the armature currents rotates at
the same speed as that created by the field current on the
rotor (which is rotating at synchronous speed) and a
steady torque results.
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A synchronous motor is a constant speed machine which
always rotates with zero slip at the synchronous speed.
The synchronous motors can be of the following types:
Round or cylindrical rotor motors
Salient or projecting rotor pole motors
Reluctance motors
Permanent magnet motors
Switched reluctance motors
Brushless d.c. and a.c. motors
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Round (Cylindrical) Rotor Motor
The round rotor or cylindrical rotor synchronous machine
has a uniform air gap between a slotted stator and rotor.
The stator is composed of iron laminations stacked
together. The rotor is a solid forging with rotor slots milled
into its surface.
A single field winding is placed in the rotor slots and a
conventional three phase distributed armature winding
is placed in the stator slots.
For synchronous motor operation, the three phase
armature winding is supplied with balanced three phase
currents, and d.c. excitation is supplied to the rotor field
winding.
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The balanced three phase armature currents
establishes a flux wave in the air gap which rotates at
synchronous speed. If the rotor also rotates at
synchronous speed, the magnetic fields of stator and rotor
are stationary relative to each other and a steady
electromagnetic torque is developed because of the
tendency of the two magnetic fields to align their axes.
The rotor field winding can be excited with direct current
supplied through slip rings and brushes from a static
phase controlled rectifier exciter or from a d.c. generator
exciter.
Round rotor synchronous machines are used for steam
and gas turbine driven generators in utility and industrial
generating stations. Ratings can exceed 1500 MW for a
single unit.
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Salient Pole Motors
In a salient pole machine, the stator has a conventional
three phase distributed armature winding placed in
slots. The field winding consists of a number of
concentrated field coils placed around projecting poles on
the rotor.
To produce alternate north and south poles, the field
winding is excited with direct current.
The salient pole construction results in a non uniform air
gap. The air gap is length is minimum in the polar, or
direct axis and is maximum in the inter polar, quadrature
axis.
The stator winding mmf will establish a larger air gap flux
when the mmf is centered on the direct axis than when
centered on the quadrature axis.
Salient pole machines have been built in unit sizes of up
to 500 MW for hydrogenerator utility applications.
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Synchronous Reluctance Motors
The synchronous reluctance motors has an unexcited
ferromagnetic rotor with polar projections.
The reluctance torque is developed by the tendency of e
ferromagnetic material to align itself with a magnetic field.
If a synchronously rotating stator field is established by
means of a conventional polyphase winding excited a
balanced polyphase a.c. supply, then the rotor runs in
exact synchronism with this field as the salient poles seek
to maintain the minimum reluctance position w.r.t. the
stator flux.
Reluctance motors have been widely used in adjustable
speed multimotor drives requiring exact speed
coordination between individual motors.
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Permanent Magnet Motors
In a permanent magnet motor operating on a fixed
frequency a.c. supply, the constant rotor flux produced by
the permanent magnets generates a constant value of
excitation emf, E
f
. The actual value of excitation emf
depends on the magnet material, its physical dimensions,
the rotor design and the air gap length.
The elimination of field coil, d.c. supply and slip rings
reduce the motor loss and the complexity. These motors
are known as brushless motors and finds applications in
robots and machine tools.
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Switched Reluctance Motors
The SRM has a doubly salient construction with projecting
poles on both stator and rotor. The machine rotor
construction is same as that of a synchronous reluctance
motor, i.e. it does not have permanent magnet or any
winding, but the stator poles have a concentrated winding.

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The SRM has a number of inherent advantages:
The machine has simple construction, making it a potentially
cheaper alternative.
There is independent and uncoupled operation of motor phases so
that the machine will continue to operate if a phase falls.
There is no possibility of converter shoot through fault because
the winding is always in series with the devices.
Its robust rotor construction makes it more reliable and suitable for
high-speed operation.
Efficient motor cooling because all windings are on the stator.
Low rotor inertia and high torque inertia ratio.

The principle demerits of the drive are that the machine
pulsating torque is high, giving high acoustic noise, and
the machine is somewhat bulky.
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Self controlled Synchronous motor drives
(Brushless D.C. and A.C. Motor Drives)
In self control, as the rotor speed changes the armature
supply frequency is also changed proportionately so the
armature field always moves at the same speed as the
rotor. This ensures that the armature and rotor fields
always rotates in synchronism for all operating points.
The term brushless d.c. motor is used to identify the
combination of a.c. machine, solid-state inverter, and rotor
position sensor that results in a drive system having a
linear torque-speed characteristic.
The rotor position sensor controls the firing signals for the
solid-state inverter. In response to these firing signals, the
inverter directs current through the stator phase winding
in a controlled sequence.
In brushless d.c. motor, the torque function is trapezoidal.
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Brushless D.C. Motor
Due to the similarity in operation with a d.c. motor, the
inverter fed self-controlled synchronous motor drive of fig.
is known as commutatorless d.c. motor or bushless d.c.
motor.
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The three phase half wave
brushless d.c. motor
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This circuit configuration is suitable for small brushless
d.c. motors in a wide variety of applications at power
levels from a few watts to 100 W. Typical applications for
these small brushless d.c. motors include turntable drives
in record players, spindle drives in hard-disk drives for
computers, etc.
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The three phase full wave
brushless d.c. motor
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Brushless A.C. Motor
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These motors are used for high power applications
(up to megawatt range), such as compressor,
blowers, fans, conveyers, cement plants, etc.
The self-control is also used for starting large
synchronous motor in gas turbine and pump storage
power plants.

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