Effects of Airgap Non-Uniformity on Performance and Reliability of Induction Motors for Special Applications

Induction motors (IM) are more economical, robust, and reliable compared to rare-earth-based machines and hence continue to dominate the market share, especially for industrial applications. However, the rotor eccentricity fault is one of the weak links in the IM reliability chain. This paper presents a detailed magnetic field transient analysis of canned induction motors for simulating static and dynamic eccentricity faults. In the present work, a detailed FEA study was carried out to investigate the effect of rotor eccentricity on important performance parameters of an induction motor such as torque, current, and air gap flux density. The effect of increasing eccentricity on the unbalanced magnetic pull is also studied for static and dynamic eccentricity.