Active thermal protection for induction motors fed by motor control devices

Abstract

Induction motors are widely used in industrial processes. The malfunction of a motor may not only lead to high repair costs, but also cause immense financial losses due to unexpected process downtime. Since thermal overload is one of the major root causes of stator winding insulation failure, an accurate and reliable monitoring of the stator winding temperature is crucial to increase the mean time to catastrophic motor breakdown, and to reduce the extraordinary financial losses due to unexpected process downtime.

To provide a reliable thermal protection for induction motors fed by motor control devices, a dc signal-injection method is proposed for in-service induction motors fed by soft-starter and variable-frequency drives. The stator winding temperature can be monitored based on the estimated stator winding resistance using the dc model of induction motors. In addition, a cooling capability monitoring technique is proposed to monitor the cooling capability of induction motors and to warn the user for proactive inspection and maintenance in the case of cooling capability deterioration. The proposed cooling capability monitoring technique, combined with the proposed stator winding temperature monitoring technique, can provide a complete thermal protection for in-service induction motors fed by motor control devices.

Aside from online thermal protection during a motor's normal operation, the thermal protection of de-energized motors is also essential to prolong a motor's lifetime. Moisture condensation is one of the major causes to motor degradation especially in high-humidity environments. To prevent moisture condensation, a non-intrusive motor heating technique is proposed by injecting currents into the motor stator winding using soft-starters. A motor's temperature can be kept above the ambient temperature due to the heat dissipation, so that the moisture condensation can be avoided.

To sum up, active stator winding temperature estimation techniques for induction motors under both operating and de-energization conditions are proposed in this dissertation for both thermal protection and optimizing the operation of a motor system. The importance of these proposed techniques lies in their non-intrusive nature: only the existing hardware in a motor control device is required for implementation; a motor's normal operation is not interrupted.