Design of a 3-Phase Stator for Improving the Performance of the Ceiling Fan Motors

Three-phase induction motors (IM) are widely used in the industry due to their robust and efficient nature yet are absent from domestic ceiling fan applications. Single-phase induction motors (SPIM) are commonly used in ceiling fan applications due to their low cost and mass manufacturing capability. SPIM suffers in performance because of the higher losses due to the harmonics which arise from their single-phase construction. As a result, they fail to meet the new energy efficiency standards set by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), Government of India (GOI). An alternate solution to this problem is the brushless DC (BLDC) motors. However, they suffer from the overall cost of the appliance. In this paper, the stator of a SPIM used in a ceiling fan is replaced with a 3-phase stator to observe its benefits for an energy-efficient ceiling fan motor application. The stator slots have been designed appropriately to achieve a high winding factor, with the three-phase concentrated winding having low pole pairs. A lower value of operating voltage and pole pairs is selected for stator design to reduce the iron losses in the machine compared to the existing conventional SPIM used in the ceiling fan. The designed stator has been simulated through a finite element analysis software FEMM. The manufactured 3-phase stator for the ceiling fan is tested at the same fan speed as that of a SPIM-based ceiling fan motor to ensure the same airflow.