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Dynamic modeling of universal motors

Conference Paper · June 1999

DOI: 10.1109/IEMDC.1999.769133 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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 Dynamic Modeling of Universal Motors
Ping Zhou John R. Brauer Scott Stanton Zoltan J. Cendes
Ansoft Corporation, 4 Station Square, Pittsburgh, PA 15219 USA
Roderick N. Ebben
Milwaukee Electric Tool Corporation, 13135 W. Lisbon road, Brookfield, WI 53005 USA

Abstract: A general time-steppingapproach is presented to solve cou-

pled field-circuit-motionproblems for universal motors. Circuit equa- -NI I @
I .dR+R.if+L.-- di + u c = us (2)
tions are used to describe the dynamic connections of field and dfSf.a d t dt
armature coils, to include the end leakage inductance and the voltage
drop across brushes, and to support a voltage source with arbitrary (3)
waveforms. In addition, the effects of the coils undergoing commuta-
tion have been considered by having them removed temporarily from J -dw + h~ = T e n , + Tap,, (4)
dr
the main winding and excited by a controlled current source. where A and V are magnetic vector potential and electric sca-
lar potential, respectively, H , is the coercivity and represents
I. INTRODUCTION the contribution from permanent magnets, J,y is the source cur-
There is extensive literature on the application of the finite rent density. For a 2D problem, the vectors have only one corn-
element method to the analysis of electrical machines. Many ponent in z-direction. One equation in the form of (2) is
commercial software packages are also available, which can be required for each winding to relate the terminal voltage u , with
~
used by engineers without specialist knowledge of field com- its terminal current if, where U, is the voltage drop across a
putation. However, no attempt has been made to deal with the capacitor, Nf is the total conductor number in the winding, U
modeling of universal motors with the only exception in Ref is the number of parallel branches, df is the polarity index (+I
[ 11, despite the fact that universal motors dominate the mains- or -1) representing forward and return paths and Sf denotes the
supplied domestic appliance and portable machine-tool mar- total area of the cross section of the winding. R , L and C are
kets. This is due to the advantages of wide variable-speed resistance, inductance and capacitance respectively. They can
range, high starting torque and attractive powedweight ratio. also include external impedance in addition to the resistance
The complexity of universal motor modeling stems from and end leakage inductance of winding itself. Finally, Eqn. (4)
the existence of many unique facts in operating the machines. is used to describe the motion of the rotor when mechanical
First, when a universal motor is operated from an AC source, transient is involved, where w is the angular velocity, J is the
the presence of both transformer induced voltage and rotational moment of inertia, h is the coefficient of friction, Ten, is the
induced voltage makes the commonly used snapshot approach electromagnetic torque computed by the virtual work method
no longer applicable. Secondly, the winding configuration is based on the field solutions and Tu,, is the external applied
constantly changing. Each coil in the armature circuit, when- mechanical torque. This electromecianical coupling model
ever passing over a stationary brush, will transit from one can be applied to investigate such transient behavior of a uni-
group of the armature coils, after being momentarily removed versal motor as starting or after a load condition change. In the
from the main circuit of the winding due to being short-cir- case of running at a specified constant steady-state speed, the
cuited by the brush, to the other group. Thirdly, all the conduc- Eqn. (4)is excluded. In both transient and steady-state cases, a
tors in both armature and stator are connected together and they moving surface method is used to deal with the arbitrary rotor
are fed by a voltage source, rather than current source. In addi- movement without the need of remeshing[2].
tion, in order to obtain the control of speed and torque, the volt- While the above mathematical model is fairly general, the
age source may be adjustable by power electronics. Finally, commutation issue has not been explored when the model is to
accounting for the effects of those short-circuited coils under- be applied to the analysis of a universal motor. First, the wind-
going commutation further complicates the problem. ing configuration keeps changing due to the transition of a coil
In this paper, a general time-stepping approach is presented undergoing commutation from one group of armature coils to
to solve coupled field-circuit-motion problems. The circuit the other group. In addition, during the time when the brushes
equations are used to describe the dynamic connections of field are simultaneously in contact with two adjacent commutator
winding and two groups of armature coils, to include the end segments, the coils connected to these segments are short-cir-
leakage inductance and the voltage drop across brushes, and to cuited and thus have to be temporarily removed from the main
support a voltage source with arbitrary waveforms. The effects circuits. Furthermore, the current in the coil undergoing com-
of saturation, slotting, rotor movement and both time and space mutation must reverse at the end of the short commutation
harmonics are taken into account. In addition, the effects of the interval. When the coil is about to leave the brush, if the current
coils undergoing commutation have been considered by having reversal is not complete, the current jumps to its final value and
them removed temporarily from the main circuit and excited by may cause sparking. The quantitative analysis of the current
a controlled current source. This allows one to obtain steady reversal and the securing of good commutation is beyond the
state and transient behavior of universal motors under any scope of this paper because it is more an empirical art than
operating conditions. quantitative science due to the electrical behavior of the car-
bon-copper contact film whose resistance is a function of cur-
11. MODELING APPROACH rent density, current direction, temperature, brush material,
moisture, and atmospheric pressure. However, it is desirable to
To calculate time-dependent magnetic fields including be able to account for the impacts of the commutation process
movement, the following system of coupled differential equa- on the motor performance in terms of a user-specified current
tions has to be solved: reversal pattern.
V X V V ~ =A JS-o- aA + o V V + V x H c In order to model the incessant change of the winding con-
(1) nection, it is essential for each coil on the armature to be able
at
0-7803-5293-9/99$10.00 0 1999 IEEE 419
to dynamically locate the group to which it belongs between to 6.664 ohm, which corresponds to the running temperature
the two groups of armature coils at each time step. This can be from 35 to 70 O C . The end winding leakage inductance is
achieved by making the polarity index df for each coil in the 0.00238H. The moment of inertia of the rotor is 6.27E-5
Eqn. (2) as a function of position as shown in Fig. l(a). When- k g - m* and the friction coefficient is set to 3.18E-6 N-m-s.
ever a coiil on the rotor passes over a stationary brush, the The commutation interval is 15 degrees since the width of
change of its polarity can be used to indicate the transition from brushes equals one commutator segment. Without losing gen-
one coil group to the other. erality, the linear commutation process is assumed.

+FY
A. DC Source Supply
in transition The main interest here is two important steady state charac-
h- teristics: speed-current curves and speed-torque curves. For
this investigation, three different voltages 60,90 and 120 V are
examined. The analysis is considerably facilitated if the speed
180 360 *deg is input as a step function of time as presented in Fig. 2(c),
where speed varies from 6,000 to 15,000 rpm with each speed
-I' U
(a) without considering commutation process
spanned 0.01s that is enough for the current and torque to reach
steady state. Figures 2(a) and 2(b) show the computed current
commutation interval and torque curves when the motor operates at the prescribed
t df
B.
;\I
terminal voltage of 90 volt. The average values are obtained by
I

-'I (b) considering commutation process f

Fig. 1 Polarity index as a function of position
In reality, however, the transition of the coil group and the
current reversal can not be accomplished instantaneously due
to the finite dimension of brushes and the existence of induc-
tance in the coils undergoing commutation. To this end, the
definition of polarity index is extended to include the commu-
tation process as shown in Fig. l(b), where T is the commuta-
tion interval representing the actual brush size. The transition
curves can describe different commutation processes. For
example, the solid line in the Fig. l(b) represents the linear
commutation and the dashed line is the case of delayed com-
mutation. At every time step, once the polarity index of a coil,
d y ) , is detected to be between the commutation interval T ,the
program will take two actions. First, this coil is temporarily
removed from the main circuits since this coil is short-circuited
by the brush and no induced voltage will contribute to the left
hand of circuit equation (2). Second, the excitation of the coil
undergoing commutation is replaced by a controlled current
source and determined by

where i?" is the terminal current of main circuit at current time

step and a is the number of parallel branches. Thus, this
scheme can be conveniently used to simulate different commu-
tation processes in terms of the user specified polarity function.
In addition, the voltage drop across a brush can be modeled by
a nonlinear resistor as a function of position and current.
111. APPLICATION EXAMPLE
The proposed method is applied to a typical small electrical Iw-A*&*_^ " A**LI

(c) s'peed aS a step function of time

tool motor with two stator poles and twelve rotor slots[ 11. In Fig. 2 Current and torque curves at different constant speed
the case of dc source supply, the total winding resistance is averaging the values on the curves over the last 0.002s of each
assumed to vary from 5.789 to 6.227 ohm with the applied ter- speed interval. Figures 3 and 4 are the computed and measured
minal voltage and running speed, which corresponds to the
operating temperature from 30 to 50 O C . This is because a current-speed and torque-speed curves. The friction and wind-
higher thermal load is associated with a higher applied voltage age torque loss has been deducted from the computed
and a lower operating speed. When the motor operates with an torque[ 11.
ac source:,additional heat sources have to be taken into account B. AC Source Supply
due to the fact that core loss occurs in the stator with alternating The computations were carried out under a sinusoidal volt-
flux. In this case, the resistance is assumed to vary from 5.898 age source of rms value 120 V and 60 Hz. Similarly, let the
420
 neous torque varies at twice the supply frequency. These com-
puted results of the rms current and time-average torque agree
well with measurements[3]. Finally, Fig. 9 shows the transient
behavior of speed during starting and load changing. The motor
starts with a load torque of 0.24 N-m and then at t = 0.15s the
load torque is changed to 0.138 N-m. Similarly, various tran-
sient responses can also be easily computed when the terminal
voltage suddenly changes
~~~ 2s.-

g
sped vs. tcrquc
=a
.4
am0

am
00

xm

5
.-LA
'
.
1
I..AA. LII
1 1

....... . I ......... 8 . . .. . . . . 8
0.3
. . . . . . . .0.4
I . . . . . . . . .05 . . . . . . . .
I

luw N-nU
Fig. 4 Speed -torque curves for three dc supply volages
speed be a step function varying from 6,000 to 21,500 rpm. The
time interval associated with each speed is chosen to span
0.05s, which is considered to be enough for the current and
torque to reach steady state. Figures 5 and 6 are the computed
current and torque waveforms at 2 1,500rpm. The current wave-
form is well matched with the measured one[3]. It can be seen
that the instantaneous torque varies at twice the supply fre-
quency. The slot effects can also be clearly observed from both
figures.
The computation of rms value from the current curve can be
carried out over the last cycle ( 1/60 sec) of each speed interval.
Fig. 7 is the obtained curve of rms current vs. speed. The time
-average torque vs. speed as shown in Fig. 8 is computed over
the last portion ( 1 / 120 sec) of each speed because the instanta-
winding current vs hmc
I

j -103
O O
OK
IncISecI
025
O

Fig. 9 Speed responses during starting and load changing

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a general approach based on the coupling of
field equations, circuit equations and motion equations is pre-
sented for the dynamic analysis of universal motors. It can be
employed to provide a virtual prototype for a new design with
complete physical accuracy.
V. REFERENCES
[ l ] R.N. Ebben, J.R. Brauer, G.C. Lizalek and Z.J. Cendes, "Performance
curves of a DC motor predicted using parametric finite element analysis",
Digests of IEEE Con$ on Electromagnetic Field Computation, June 1998.
[2] P. Zhou, S . Stanton and Z. J. Cendes, "Dynamic modeling of three phase
and single phase induction motors", A companion paper to be presented at
IEDMDC-99, Seattle, May, 1999.
[3] R.N. Ebben, J.R. Brauer, Z.J. Cendes and N.A. Demerdash, "Prediction of
performance characteristics of a universal motor using parametric finite
element analysis", A companion paper to be presented at IEDMDC-99,
L.. . -__II_ ~~I ....... -I---"
lm ISCCI
......... - I . - x - ~ - ^

Seattle, May, 1999.

Fig. 6 Computed torque waveform at 120V ac supply and 21,500 rpm
421

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