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1. Induction Machines – Operating Principles

 Most electrical machines today are ac machines (induction, synchronous, pm, sr etc)
which require ac windings connected to the fixed frequency supply, or more
commonly an electronic variable-frequency converter.

 Traditionally, most ac machines are three-phase and connected to the national grid-
based three-phase supply. Electrical machines are a very important load on any
electrical system around the world because about 50% of all the electrical energy
generated is converted back to mechanical power through electrical machines.

 The most common type of electrical machine in use today is the AC induction
machine which is the industrial workhorse. It is made in all sizes from mW, kW and
MW! It drives pumps, fan, compressors in every conceivable application.

 More and more electrical machines today are connected to variable-frequency

converters to provide variable speed operation that is now a critical requirement in
many applications, particularly transportation.

 In these two introductory lectures – we will look at how the induction machine
works, develop the basic equivalent-circuit and examine the simple operation and
then focus on two important new application areas: induction generators for wind
turbines and electrical drives using induction machines.

1.1 Construction of a three-phase AC Induction Machine

The basic three-phase AC induction machine is composed of a number of critical parts:

 Stator magnetic core

 Stator AC winding
 Rotor magnetic core
 Rotor AC winding
 General mechanical parts: bearings, shaft and outer casing.

Figure 1 shows a cut-away of a standard induction machine

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Figure 1: Cut-away of an induction machine

The stator and rotor cores form the main magnetic circuit in the machine and are made
using laminated electrical steel to reduce eddy current losses and to improve the magnetic
properties of the steel. Figures 2 and 3 below show examples of laminated stator and rotor
cores and also a schematic of the motor construction.

Figure 2: Stator and rotor laminated cores Figure 3: Construction of the magnetic circuit
The slots in the stator and rotor house the AC windings with a small airgap (typically 0.25 –
2.5mm) separating the stator and rotor. Figure 4 and 5 shows a completed AC stator
winding and the individual coils that form the winding.
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Figure 4: Complete three-phase AC stator winding Figure 5: Individual coils

The stator three-phase winding is made from a series of individual coils that are connected
in three groups to form the three-phase winding. Each coil is normally made from a number
of turns using a standard copper wire with a resin coating on the surface to provide
electrical insulation. The rotor winding is also a three-phase winding but because it only
needs to be short-circuited on itself (see later), this can be reduced to a simple aluminium
casting that makes the machine very robust and cheap to manufacture. Figure 6 shows a
typical three-phase rotor AC winding – this has been reduced to a number of rotor bars
short-circuited at each end of the rotor by a pair of end-rings. This can be cast in one piece
using molten aluminium – the rotor winding is often referred to as a cage winding.

Figure 6: Cast aluminium rotor cage winding.

1.2 How does an AC induction machine work?

The three-phase stator winding is connected to the three-phase supply. This will cause a set
of three-phase currents to flow in the winding which in turns creates a magnetic field which
travels across the airgap into the rotor and back again – see Figure 7. If we look at the
magnetic field around the airgap circumference of the rotor, we will see a sinusoidal
magnetic field variation comprising a number of magnetic north and south poles – the
example in Figure 7 has 4 poles. The winding coils can be connected to form any even
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number of magnetic poles around the circumference: eg 2,4,6, etc. We denote the number
of poles by 2p where p represents the pole pairs in the machine.

Figure 7: Stator magnetic field Figure 8: Stator and rotor coordinate system

What we will also see is that the magnetic field rotates around the circumference of the
rotor at an angular speed in rad/s known as the synchronous speed.
If we now look at the mathematical description of this magnetic field (flux density):

𝐵(𝜃, 𝑡) = 𝐵̂ cos(𝜔𝑡 − 𝑝𝜃)

where ω is the supply frequency in rad/s.
𝜔
The synchronous speed (rad/s) is defined as follows: 𝜔𝑆 = 𝑃

The magnetic field crosses the airgap and enters the rotor – to look at what happens to this
magnetic field, we will move from the stator coordinate system, θ, to the rotor coordinate
system, ψ, using the transformation:
𝜃 = 𝜔𝑟 𝑡 + 𝜑
where ωr is the rotor mechanical rotational speed in rad/s.
The magnetic field in the rotor can now be described mathematically as follows:

𝐵(𝜑, 𝑡) = 𝐵̂ cos((𝜔 − 𝑝𝜔𝑟 )𝑡 − 𝑝𝜑)

We now introduce an important parameter in induction machines to tidy this up called the
slip, s:
𝜔𝑆 − 𝜔𝑟 𝜔 − 𝑝𝜔𝑟
𝑠= =
𝜔𝑆 𝜔
so that we get finally:

𝐵(𝜑, 𝑡) = 𝐵̂ cos(𝑠𝜔𝑡 − 𝑝𝜑)

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This shows us that the magnetic field created by the stator windings, when transferred to
the rotating rotor has the same number of magnetic poles (2p) but the frequency has
changed to sω – called ‘slip frequency’.
If we look at typical values of slip – the motor normally operates (as we will see later)
between zero speed and synchronous speed: the corresponding values of slip would be s=1
at zero speed and s=0 at synchronous speed. Slip frequency on the rotor therefore would
normally vary between mains frequency, ω, when the motor starts reducing linearly to zero
frequency at synchronous speed.
The next question now is what happens on the rotor?
As we have seen earlier, the rotor winding is effectively a short-circuited three-phase
winding and the construction is simplified to a number of rotor bars sitting near the rotor
surface, short-circuited at each end by an aluminium ring. Each bar will be exposed to the
magnetic field crossing radially from the stator to the rotor and an emf is induced in each
bar from a simple consideration of Blv:
Ebar = B (radial magnetic field) x l (axial length of the bar) x v (bar circumferential velocity
relative to the synchronous speed of the magnetic field)
Each rotor bar will have a similar emf induced in it (with a phase shift from one bar to the
next) and because the rotor bars are short-circuited by the end-rings, the bar emf’s will
drive a set of currents around the rotor cage winding. The frequency of the bar emf’s and
currents will be ‘slip frequency’ again.
The rotor bar currents flowing around the rotor cage winding will then in turn produce a
rotor magnetic field:

𝐵𝑅 (𝜑, 𝑡) = 𝐵̂ cos(𝑠𝜔𝑡 − 𝑝𝜑 − ∅)
This is still expressed in the rotor reference frame, however if we transform that back into
the stator coordinates as we did earlier, we get:

𝐵𝑅 (𝜃, 𝑡) = 𝐵̂ cos(𝜔𝑡 − 𝑝𝜃 − ∅)
We can see now that by simply connecting our stator windings to the three-phase supply,
we have created a rotating stator airgap field and ‘induced’ a rotating rotor magnetic field
– hence the origin of the name – Induction Motor!
It is the interaction between the stator and rotor magnetic fields that creates the
electromagnetic torque in the machine. There are three magnetic conditions that need to
be satisfied to create a steady torque:

 The stator and rotor magnetic field must have the same number of magnetic poles
(2p)
 They must have the same rotational synchronous speed (ω/p)
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 There must be a phase-shift between the fields (φ )

You can see that the stator and rotor magnetic fields defined by the expressions above
satisfy all three criteria which means a steady electromagnetic torque will be created to
make the rotor rotate.
Several key features come from this:

 The torque developed does not depend on the rotor speed, ωr (not quite, see next
bullet point!)
 A torque is developed at all speeds EXCEPT for ωr = ωs ! See if you can figure out
why – the clue is to look at the velocity of any rotor bar with respect to the stator
magnetic field.
This means an induction motor can start and accelerate a mechanical load until the rotor
speed reaches close to but not equal to the synchronous speed. It is a simple, cheap and
very robust machine which is the main reason why is has been the industrial machine of
choice for driving pumps, fans etc. for many decades.

1.3 Operational Characteristics

The operational characteristics of the three-phase induction motor are of key interest to the
electrical supply industry because it is by far the biggest electrical load on the transmission
system.

Figure 9: Typical torque characteristic of three-phase induction machine with fan-type

mechanical load.
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Figure 9 shows a typical torque-speed characteristic of a three-phase induction machine.

Some key features include a low starting torque increasing to a maximum or pull-out
torque and then decreasing steeply to zero torque at synchronous speed. A typical fan-
type industrial load has also been superimposed on the figure to illustrate the accelerating
torque to accelerate the fan and also the operating point which is typically at a speed just a
little lower than the synchronous speed. The example shown here is for a 4 pole motor
operating from a 50Hz supply – the synchronous speed in this case is 1500 rpm (see if you
can work this out?)

Figure 10: Typical Motor current and efficiency characteristics

Figure 10 shows the typical input motor current and efficiency. Key features are a very high
starting current of the order of 5-7 times higher than the rated motor current. This is often
a serious problem for the electrical supply to large MW induction motors – the huge starting
current required by these machines can lead to serious supply problems. The starting
current falls however steadily to a minimum at synchronous speed. The efficiency on the
other hand increases steadily to a maximum close to synchronous speed and this is why it is
sensible to design the machine to operate at full load at a low slip value where the efficiency
is high.

1.4 Steady-State Equivalent Circuit

The operational performance characteristics shown in the previous section have been
produced using an electrical equivalent circuit of the three-phase induction motor. The
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easiest way to develop this is to consider the machine at zero speed. In this case the motor
looks and operates like a three-phase transformer with the secondary windings (the rotor)
short-circuited and an airgap in the magnetic circuit. So it would seem sensible that a good
starting point for developing an induction motor per-phase equivalent-circuit is the per-
phase equivalent-circuit of a transformer shown in Figure 11:

Figure 11: Transformer equivalent-circuit modified for induction motor operation

The basic transformer equivalent circuit is evident in Figure 11 but it has been modified to
include the effect of the induction motor operating at any slip, s. As the rotor speeds up, the
emfs induced in the rotor (unlike the secondary in a transformer) change because the rotor
frequency is slip-frequency and not mains frequency. This means that the rotor induced
emf – E2 – in the equivalent circuit is scaled by the slip, s, and also the rotor leakage
reactance, X2, which would normally be determined at line frequency.
This is a nuisance because we cannot eliminate the ‘ideal transformer’ to simplify the
equivalent-circuit. However this can be done by dividing all the parameters in the rotor (or
secondary) by the slip, s. The ideal transformer can then be removed by referring the rotor
parameters to the stator (primary) side of the circuit as is common in transformer
equivalent-circuits. The final per-phase equivalent circuit for the induction machine is now
shown in Figure 12.
You can see the only difference between the equivalent circuit for an induction machine as
shown in Figure 12 and that for a transformer is the term R 2’ which is divided by the rotor
slip, s. This term modifies the circuit as the rotor speed changes.
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Figure 12: Per-phase equivalent circuit for a three-phase induction machine.

The terms in the per-phase induction machine equivalent circuit are as follows (all quantities
are per-phase values):
V1 - Stator phase voltage
R1 - Stator phase resistance
X1 - Stator leakage reactance
Xm - Stator magnetising reactance
Ri - Iron loss resistance
X’2 - Referred rotor leakage reactance
R’2 - Referred rotor resistance
These quantities would normally be given by the motor manufacturer or determined by
test.
The per-phase induction motor equivalent-circuit shown in Figure 12 can be used to
determine the motor characteristics shown in the previous section. The equivalent-circuit is
obviously an electrical equivalent-circuit so any electrical quantity can be determined in the
usual way from this circuit. The torque developed by the machine is not so easy! To do this
we need to look at the steady-state power balance in the machine:

Pelecin = Plosses + Pmechout

𝑅2′
3.∗ (𝐼12 𝑅1 + 𝐼𝑖2 𝑅𝑖 + 𝐼2′2 ) = 3.∗ (𝐼12 𝑅1 + 𝐼𝑖2 𝑅𝑖 + 𝐼2′2 𝑅2′ ) + 𝑇𝜔𝑟
𝑠
3 𝑅′
′2 2
𝑇= ∗ (𝐼2 )
𝜔𝑆 𝑠
The expression above for the torque developed by the motor can be determined by simply
obtaining the current, I2’, from the equivalent circuit.
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One common modification to simplify the calculations is to use a Thevenin equivalent

circuit of the circuit shown in Figure 12, ignoring the iron loss resistance:

Figure 13: Thevenin per-phase equivalent-circuit of the induction motor:

where:

1.5 Steady-State Equivalent Circuit – Example

A three-phase, 6-pole induction machine operates from a star-connected, 50Hz, 415V

supply at a rotor speed of 970 rpm. The equivalent-circuit parameters are as follows: R2’ =
1.2 Ohms, X2’ = 2.2 Ohms. You may ignore R1, X1, Xm and Ri.
Determine the motor torque, input current and efficiency and also the speed at which peak
torque occurs.

𝑉̅𝑇𝐻 = 𝑉̅
𝑍̅𝑇𝐻 = 𝑅𝑇𝐻 + 𝑗𝑋𝑇𝐻 = 𝑗𝑋2′
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2.𝜋𝑓
The synchronous speed is : 𝜔𝑆 = = 104.7 𝑟𝑎𝑑/𝑠
3
𝜔𝑆 − 𝜔𝑟
The rotor slip : 𝑠= = 0.03
𝜔𝑆

𝑉
The input current is therefore 𝐼2′ = 2
= 5.98A
𝑅′ 2
√[( 2 ) +(𝑋2′ ) ]
𝑠

Torque = 40.99 Nm
Efficiency = 97%
To get the peak torque, the quick way to do this is to use the maximum power transfer
theorem. The torque is proportional to the loss in the resistor R2’ so to get maximum
torque we have to maximise the power loss in the R2’ ….. which means from the max
transfer theorem:
𝑅2′
|𝑍̅𝑇𝐻 | = = 𝑋2′
𝑠
𝑅2′
or 𝑠= = 0.545
𝑋2′

thus rotor speed for maximum torque = 454.9 rpm.