Acceleration tests to determine salient pole synchronous motor inrush currents and torques

Abstract

Determining torque and current at locked rotor and various slips during the acceleration test on a synchronous machine is very tedious and time consuming. Induction and synchronous machines behave similarly during acceleration except that synchronous machine acceleration can include a pulsation torque. Because of the salient poles, conditions exist where the synchronous motor has minimum torque at quadrature axis and maximum torque at direct axis during locked rotor or stall. Since synchronous machines do not have large numbers of rotor bars in the amortisseur winding, like the induction motor has in the squirrel cage, their stall times tend to be shorter. Due to the shorter stall time and large starting torque, locked-rotor torque and current are generally determined from acceleration tests conducted at reduced voltage rather than by tests at stand-still. Data showing that saturation effects impact both torque and current are presented in this paper. The data shows that the voltage index that has to be applied to the torque and current measured at reduced voltage varies with speed and can be obtained from a series of acceleration tests.