Principles Of Electric Machines And Power Elect...

An electric motor is an electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a wire winding to generate force in the form of torque applied on the motor's shaft. An electric generator is mechanically identical to an electric motor, but operates with a reversed flow of power, converting mechanical energy into electrical energy.

Applications include industrial fans, blowers and pumps, machine tools, household appliances, power tools, vehicles, and disk drives. Small motors may be found in electric watches. In certain applications, such as in regenerative braking with traction motors, electric motors can be used in reverse as generators to recover energy that might otherwise be lost as heat and friction.

Electric motors produce linear or rotary force (torque) intended to propel some external mechanism, such as a fan or an elevator. An electric motor is generally designed for continuous rotation, or for linear movement over a significant distance compared to its size. Magnetic solenoids are also transducers that convert electrical power to mechanical motion, but can produce motion over only a limited distance.

The first commutator .mw-parser-output .vanchor>:target~.vanchor-text{background-color:#b1d2ff}DC electric motor capable of turning machinery was invented by British scientist William Sturgeon in 1832.[17] Following Sturgeon's work, a commutator-type direct-current electric motor was built by American inventor Thomas Davenport and Emily Davenport,[18] which he patented in 1837. The motors ran at up to 600 revolutions per minute, and powered machine tools and a printing press.[19] Due to the high cost of primary battery power, the motors were commercially unsuccessful and bankrupted Davenport. Several inventors followed Sturgeon in the development of DC motors, but all encountered the same battery cost issues. As no electricity distribution system was available at the time, no practical commercial market emerged for these motors.[20]

After many other more or less successful attempts with relatively weak rotating and reciprocating apparatus Prussian/Russian Moritz von Jacobi created the first real rotating electric motor in May 1834. It developed remarkable mechanical output power. His motor set a world record, which Jacobi improved four years later in September 1838.[21] His second motor was powerful enough to drive a boat with 14 people across a wide river. It was also in 1839/40 that other developers managed to build motors with similar and then higher performance.

A benefit to DC machines came from the discovery of the reversibility of the electric machine, which was announced by Siemens in 1867 and observed by Pacinotti in 1869.[6] Gramme accidentally demonstrated it on the occasion of the 1873 Vienna World's Fair, when he connected two such DC devices up to 2 km from each other, using one of them as a generator and the other as motor.[25]

Electric motors revolutionized industry. Industrial processes were no longer limited by power transmission using line shafts, belts, compressed air or hydraulic pressure. Instead, every machine could be equipped with its own power source, providing easy control at the point of use, and improving power transmission efficiency. Electric motors applied in agriculture eliminated human and animal muscle power from such tasks as handling grain or pumping water. Household uses (like in washing machines, dishwashers, fans, air conditioners and refrigerators (replacing ice boxes)) of electric motors reduced heavy labor in the home and made higher standards of convenience, comfort and safety possible. Today, electric motors consume more than half of the electric energy produced in the US.[29]

An air gap between the stator and rotor allows it to turn. The width of the gap has a significant effect on the motor's electrical characteristics. It is generally made as small as possible, as a large gap weakens performance. It is the main source of the low power factor at which motors operate. The magnetizing current increases and the power factor decreases with the air gap, so narrow gaps are better. Conversely, gaps that are too small may pose mechanical problems in addition to noise and losses.

The stator surrounds the rotor, and usually holds field magnets, which are either electromagnets consisting of wire windings around a ferromagnetic iron core or permanent magnets. These create a magnetic field that passes through the rotor armature, exerting force on the windings. The stator core is made up of many thin metal sheets that are insulated from each other, called laminations. These laminations are made using electrical steel which has a specified magnetic permeability, hysteresis, and saturation. Laminations are used to reduce losses that would result from induced circulating eddy currents that would flow if a solid core were used. Mains powered AC motors typically immobilize the wires within the windings by impregnating them with varnish in a vacuum. This prevents the wires in the winding from vibrating against each other which would abrade the wire insulation causing it to fail prematurely. Resin-packed motors, used in deep well submersible pumps, washing machines, and air conditioners, encapsulate the stator in plastic resin to prevent corrosion and/or reduce conducted noise.[52]

A commutated DC motor has a set of rotating windings wound on an armature mounted on a rotating shaft. The shaft also carries the commutator. Thus, every brushed DC motor has AC flowing through its windings. Current flows through one or more pairs of brushes that touch the commutator; the brushes connect an external source of electric power to the rotating armature.

A permanent magnet (PM) motor does not have a field winding on the stator frame, relying instead on PMs to provide the magnetic field. Compensating windings in series with the armature may be used on large motors to improve commutation under load. This field is fixed and cannot be adjusted for speed control. PM fields (stators) are convenient in miniature motors to eliminate the power consumption of the field winding. Most larger DC motors are of the "dynamo" type, which have stator windings. Historically, PMs could not be made to retain high flux if they were disassembled; field windings were more practical to obtain the needed flux. However, large PMs are costly, as well as dangerous and difficult to assemble; this favors wound fields for large machines.

To minimize overall weight and size, miniature PM motors may use high energy magnets made with neodymium; most are neodymium-iron-boron alloy. With their higher flux density, electric machines with high-energy PMs are at least competitive with all optimally designed singly-fed synchronous and induction electric machines. Miniature motors resemble the structure in the illustration, except that they have at least three rotor poles (to ensure starting, regardless of rotor position) and their outer housing is a steel tube that magnetically links the exteriors of the curved field magnets.

Modern BLDC motors range in power from a fraction of a watt to many kilowatts. Larger BLDC motors rated up to about 100 kW are used in electric vehicles. They also find use in electric model aircraft.

A commutated, electrically excited, series or parallel wound motor is referred to as a universal motor because it can be designed to operate on either AC or DC power. A universal motor can operate well on AC because the current in both the field and the armature coils (and hence the resultant magnetic fields) synchronously reverse polarity, and hence the resulting mechanical force occurs in a constant direction of rotation.

Operating at normal power line frequencies, universal motors are often used in sub-kilowatt applications. Universal motors formed the basis of the traditional railway traction motor in electric railways. In this application, using AC power on a motor designed to run on DC would experience efficiency losses due to eddy current heating of their magnetic components, particularly the motor field pole-pieces that, for DC, would have used solid (un-laminated) iron. They are now rarely used.

An advantage is that AC power may be used on motors that specifically have high starting torque and compact design if high running speeds are used. By contrast, maintenance is higher and lifetimes are shortened. Such motors are used in devices that are not heavily used, and have high starting-torque demands. Multiple taps on the field coil provide (imprecise) stepped speed control. Household blenders that advertise many speeds typically combine a field coil with several taps and a diode that can be inserted in series with the motor (causing the motor to run on half-wave rectified AC). Universal motors also lend themselves to electronic speed control and, as such, are a choice for devices such as domestic washing machines. The motor can agitate the drum (both forwards and in reverse) by switching the field winding with respect to the armature.

Low-power synchronous timing motors (such as those for traditional electric clocks) may have multi-pole permanent magnet external cup rotors, and use shading coils to provide starting torque. Telechron clock motors have shaded poles for starting torque, and a two-spoke ring rotor that performs like a discrete two-pole rotor.

Doubly fed electric motors have two independent multiphase winding sets, which contribute active (i.e., working) power to the energy conversion process, with at least one of the winding sets electronically controlled for variable speed operation. Two independent multiphase winding sets (i.e., dual armature) are the maximum provided in a single package without topology duplication. Doubly-fed electric motors have an effective constant torque speed range that is twice synchronous speed for a given frequency of excitation. This is twice the constant torque speed range as singly-fed electric machines, which have only one active winding set. 781b155fdc