Design and development of automated high temperature motor test facility

Abstract

With increasing applications in high performance actuation systems as in aerospace and nuclear industries, demand for motors operating at an ambient temperature of 100°C and above has increased. Hence, it is highly necessary to validate the performance of motors at high temperature before their integration into complex critical systems. Most commercial test benches for motor available today, are designed for operation only at normal temperature. This paper describes the design, physical structure, operating principle and data acquisition system of automated test facility developed for testing stepper motors, brushed DC motors and brushless servo motors at room temperature as well as at elevated temperatures. To make the entire measurement system automated, a graphical user interface based on C# software is developed. Through the experiments on standard motors, quality of the design, performance of test bench and implementation of control modes are validated. The results obtained show a successful intercommunication between modules such as control, drive, measurement, data acquisition and display as per the required performance.