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Induction Motors (1 Viewer)

Aerath

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I'm just wondering...if someone could please explain how an induction motor operates. I've read Jacaranda, one of the answers in Success One, and my teacher's dotpoint notes - but I don't understand it.

Many thanks in advanced.
 

darkchild69

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AC Induction Motor

An induction motor is an AC machine in which torque is produced by the interaction of a rotating magnetic field produced by the stator (AC voltage) and currents induced in the rotor. In an induction motor, the stator and rotor are separated by a thin air gap. Another difference is that in induction motors the rotor is free to move.

Simplest form of AC induction motor is the squirrel-cage motor (looks like mice running wheel)

Squirrel Cage Motor

A squirrel cage motor is an assembly of parallel conductors and short-circuiting end rings in shape of a cylindrical squirrel cage. The end rings ‘short-circuit’ the bars and allow a current to flow from one side to the other of the cage.

The bars and end rings are encased in a laminated iron armature (cylindrical cover over the bars). The iron intensifies the magnetic field passing through the conductors of the rotor age and the laminations decrease the heating losses due to eddy currents.


Slip Speed – the difference between the speed of the rotating magnetic field and the speed of the rotor. If there is no difference, no relative movement and no induced current and no force. When any induction motor has a load, the rotor slows down. This means the relative movement between the magnetic field and the conductor bars is greater and that the induced current and magnetic force due to the current are increased.


Advantages and Disadvantages of Induction Motors

Advantages

- very rugged and reliable (as they have no brushes or commutator, little friction)
- Simple and cheap to construct
- Self-starting
- Economical and efficient to use

Disadvantages

- Fixed-speed machines
- Starting torque is very low (they do not get heavy loads moving very quickly)
- The speed of an induction motor drops with an increase in the load.
 

astroe

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Meh, I reckon I get the general gist of it.

You have your squirrel cage in the middle right?
Anyway you have your field windings, three for example, this acts create a variable electromagnet.

Each of the field windings act like a little coil, at three places around where the squirrel cage sits. The coils can act as magnets when a current is passed through them.

The reason why they're AC is that when one winding has a current supplied, it becomes a magnet when the other two windings aren't. That's why the AC current needs to be 3 phase, so you have three separate out-of-phase AC currents.

This changing magnetic field interacts with the magnet field within the squirrel cage itself, making the squirrel cage move by being "attracted" to whichever winding is the magnet at the time.

It kinda works like Mag-Lev trains, how the magnet polarities alternate cyclically, so in this case, the squirrel cage is always attracted to one of the windings at any given moment.

Ehhh, LOL I'm not good at explaining things. :haha:
 

anom1ly

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on the outside, you have your stator. its made up on three sets of electromagnets which are each 120 degrees out of phase. as the current alternates, a different set of electromagnets are switched on. as you can imagine, as each electromagnet is switched on, it has the effect of a magnetic field moving around the circle. thus, you have a changing magnetic field.

the rotor experiences a change in flux, thus inducing a current (faradays law). The current induced will generate a magnetic field to oppose the change that created it. (lenz's law)

so as the electromagnets run around in a circle, you have you cylinder with a magnetic field of opposite polarity chasing it around.
 

JasonNg1025

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As anom1ly said, there's 3 sets of electromagnet coils in a circle as a stator (six coils altogether). They turn one pair on, then off, then the next pair on, and so on until they have a 'rotating' magnetic field. The rotor can be a squirrel cage structure mounted inside. The rotation is quite different.

Imagine you have a rod going into the page inside a magnetic field going up. The rod moves to the right, so a 'current' out of the page should be induced. The force on the rod is left to counteract the initial movement. Now imagine the magnetic field is moving to the left. Relative to the magnetic field, the rod is actually moving to the right and it will behave that way, i.e. a 'current' will be induced out of the page and in the same way a force will be induced to the left, and it will 'chase' the magnetic field.

In the same way, when the electromagnets are turned on and off to make a rotating magnetic field, currents will be induced in the rod and around the end rings (which allow the current to form) which interact with the magnetic field to follow it.
 

k02033

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i written that dot pt in terms of the 2 laws

Unlike DC motors, AC motors operate only on AC electricity. The frequency of the AC electricity can be made very precise, thus the speed of the AC motor rotation can be set precisely. DC motors lack this feature and its rotation is only controlled by the magnitude of the current input. However principally both the AC and DC motor uses a rotor and stator component to convent electrical energy into rotational kinetic energy. The rotor of the AC motor is usually the squirrel cage cylinder. It is an assembly of parallel conducting rods (either aluminium or copper) connected to end rings on either side. This entire cage is then encased in a laminated iron armature, this helps intensify the magnetic field and reducing heating effects. Whereas the DC rotor is simply a coil mounted onto an axle, encased in an armature. The AC stator consists of number of pairs of coils each with an iron core. These coil are mounted onto the frame of the motor, which surrounds a cylindrical space where is able to set up a rotating magnetic field. The AC induction motor uses this rotating magnetic field in stator component to induce a current in the rotor cage. This is achieved since there is clearly a relative motion between the conducting rods and the magnetic field and flux cutting the conductor is changing with time, thus by Faraday’s law of induction, a current will be set up. This current then interacts with the stator magnetic field to spin the rotor. This interaction comes about from Lenz’s law. The law says the induced current will oppose the change that created it. The change was the spinning of the magnetic field; hence the induced current must create a motor effect that provides a torque for the squirrel cage to spin in the direction of the rotation fields, thus attempting to stop the change that initiated the induction. However the motor must do work so that the rotor never catches up to the magnetic fields, or else the relative motion would disappear and induction will be lost. The difference between the rotor and magnetic angular velocities is termed the slip speed. This method is very different to operation of DC motors, where current is directly feed to the rotor coils, and in AC the current that drives the rotation is induced in the rotor. Hence the AC motor utilises induction and the motor effect, while the DC motor uses just the motor effect. The AC motor has several advantages over its DC counterpart. The AC motor has less moving parts and so experiences less wear and tear and consequently less maintenance and repair, reducing cost. DC motor has too many moving parts, the sparking between the commentators and brushes causes energy lost. AC motors loses energy, as induction also takes place in nearby conductors. DC motors do not have such problem.
 
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MrMMMan

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Simply:
-Changing magnetic fields through rotor induce currents in rotor
-Currents in rotor produce magnetic fields
-These magnetic fields interact with the original external magnetic fields and motor effect occurs
-Rotor rotates and so it is a motor.

There must be a lag between rotor motion and changing fields for current induction.
 

Aerath

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Hmmm, I always called it 'slippage'. But yeah, don't really need this stuff ever again. Hopefully. :p
 

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