ROTATING AC MACHINES (2EE501)
(EE301)
INTRODUCTION, CONSTRUCTION,
OPERATING PRINCIPLE
(3-PH INDUCTION MOTOR)
3-PHASE INDUCTION MOTOR
Induction motors are versatile motors and applied for many industrial and domestic purposes.
There are many advantages of Induction motor over synchronous and DC motors, these are:
Low cost
Robust in nature
Less maintenance
Singly excited
More than 80% of all the motors used in the world are induction motors.
Similar to other electrical rotating machine, a 3-ph induction motor also have two main parts i.e. stator and
rotor.
3-PHASE INDUCTION MOTOR: CONSTRUCTION
Stator:
The stator of 3-ph induction motor mainly have three parts:
Stator frame: It is casted or fabricated using rolled steel plates and provide
the mechanical support to the stator core.
Stator core: It is built up by silicon-steel lamination of 0.4 to 0.5 mm. Each
lamination is separated by insulation. The core is laminated to reduce the
eddy current losses.
Stator winding: The insulated stator conductor are connected in the form of
three-phase winding. This winding may be either star or delta connected.
3-PHASE INDUCTION MOTOR: CONSTRUCTION
Rotor:
The rotor is made up of laminations of same material as the stator.
There are two types of rotors in induction motor:
Squirrel cage rotor:
This rotor is cheap and robust is construction.
It is cylindrical in shape and has sheet steel laminations.
The slots are not in parallel to the shaft but are skewed to reduce the crawling.
Copper or aluminium bars are placed in the slots to form a cage type structure.
These conductor bars are short circuited at the end using end rings.
Wound rotor or slip ring rotor
In this rotor the 3 phase winding is placed in slots across rotor periphery similar to
stator.
Rotor winding is star connected and three terminals of rotor winding are brought
out for connecting additional resistance.
This rotor is costly and provide high starting torque.
Ref: [Link]
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SQUIRREL CAGE AND WOUND ROTOR I.M.
Squirrel Cage Motor Wound Rotor Motor
No rotor terminals are available for any external Rotor terminals are available for connection of
connections. external resistance or other device.
No slip rings and brushes so robust in Slip ring and brushes are available which requires
construction. frequent maintenance.
Economical. Costlier compared to squirrel cage motor.
Low starting torque. With inserting external resistance in rotor, high
starting torque is possible.
Speed control not possible from rotor side. Speed control is possible from rotor side.
OPERATING PRINCIPLE
Three phase supply is provided to the stator of 3-ph induction motor.
The 3-ph stator current produces rotating magnetic field in the air gap.
This rotating magnetic field cuts the rotor conductor and an emf will be induced in rotor conductors by Faraday’s
law of electro-magnetic induction.
The rotor conductors are short circuited, thus the induced emf in rotor conductor will produce the rotor currents.
As per the Lorentz Law, when a current carrying conductor placed in magnetic field, it will experience a force.
The current carrying rotor conductor will experience the force due to the presence of rotating magnetic field and
rotor will start to rotate.
When the rotor speed becomes equal to synchronous speed, the flux cutting between R.M.F and rotor will stop and
induced emf in rotor conductor will become zero.
It means that at synchronous speed of rotor, the torque produced in the rotor conductor will become zero and
induction motor can never rotate at synchronous speed.
This motor runs at slightly less than synchronous speed therefore it is called asynchronous motor.
REFERENCE:
All the problems are examples of following [Link] may go through the books for more details.
1. D. P. Kothari and I. J. Nagrath, Electric Machines,TMH
2. P.S. Bimbhara, Electrical Machinery, Khanna Publishers