958 PIERS Proceedings, Xian, China, March 2226, 2010

High Frequency Parameters of a Hermetic Motor and Their Effects

on Conducted Emission
Ming Chen, Xudong Sun, and Lipei Huang
Country State Key Lab of Power Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering
Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

Abstract The high frequency (HF) equivalent circuit model of the typical three phase her-
metic motor used in a variable frequency air conditioner is established for analyzing the conducted
emission to the distribution network, and its parameters are extracted from the impedance char-
acteristics of the motor by applying a least-squared data fitting procedure. The impedance char-
acteristics are measured in two states: the fluorocarbon in the motor is liquid and exhausted,
and the difference between the parameters in the two states is analyzed. The HF circuit model
of the conducted emission propagation path is established by connecting the models of the motor
and the related passive elements together. The effect of the motor parameters is investigated
by simulation, and the results indicate that the equivalent winding-to-ground capacitance is the
most sensitive parameter. The emission spectrum when the motor operates normally is measured
to verify the above model and analysis. The spectrum obtained by simulation with the param-
eters in the latter state matches with the measured one in general, which shows that the motor
model and the extraction method of its HF parameters are effective, and the analysis results are
credible.

1. INTRODUCTION
In a modern PWM variable frequency AC drive consisting in a motor and an inverter, power
semiconductor devices such as insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are widely used as power
switches generally operating at high frequency. The rapid transition of voltage and current when
the switches turn on or off would cause electromagnetic emission through the motor, cable, the
passive devices and other related parts in the circuit, and result in electromagnetic interference
(EMI) problems, such as terminal over voltage in motor with long cables and high frequency
leakage currents flowing in the stray capacitances of the cables and the motor. In order to study
the characteristics of the propagation path and its influence on the level of conducted emissions,
it is necessary to use precise models of the motor, its PWM inverter and cables [1]. Besides,
designers and users of the drives are very interesting in predicting the conducted EMI level with
an acceptable accuracy. Therefore, the high frequency (HF) models of the whole inverter system
have to be investigated [2]. In any case, the HF behavior of the motor plays an important role in
determining the conducted emission [3].
Variable frequency air conditioners are used more and more widely nowadays. In such an air
conditioner, a drive consisting in a three phase hermetic motor and an inverter is adopted. The
conducted emission caused by the inverter is strictly limited by the relative standards, so the
manufacturers have to try to make them satisfy the requirements. The motor is an important
part of the propagation path of the emission. In order to evaluate the emission level, a modeling
method of the typical three phase hermetic motor is developed based on experiments in this paper.
The HF parameters of the hermetic motor are extracted when the fluorocarbon in it is liquid and
exhausted respectively, and the difference between them is examined to find out the one suitable for
the evaluation. Then the effects of the parameters are analyzed and a comparison is made between
the spectrum resulting from simulation and the measured one to verify the motor model and its
parameters.

2. THE HF CIRCUIT MODEL AND PARAMETERS OF THE HERMETIC MOTOR

In order to establish the HF equivalent circuit model of the propagation path of the conducted
emission to the distribution network, the models of the hermetic motor with certain accuracy
should be set up at first. Such a motor has inductive couplings and stray capacitances which are
more complex than those of a simple inductive load [4, 5]. Obviously, the whole high frequency
parameters of the motor are very complicated, which are related to its windings, core and structure.
Therefore, simplification should be made for establishing the model and extracting its parameters.
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Xian, China, March 2226, 2010 959

Re
W
Ld N

C1 Cg
G

Figure 1: The HF circuit model for one phase.

2.1. The HF Equivalent Circuit Model of the Motor

The HF parameters of the motor are inherently distributed ones. But, for the convenience of
analysis, some lumped parameters have to be used to set up the model.
In most cases, the high frequency lumped equivalent circuit with parasitic capacitances for an AC
motor will provide an adequate approximation of the impedance characteristics of the motor [6].
Such a model, after a slight modification, is adopted as the high frequency equivalent circuit
model of the hermetic motor. The equivalent circuit for a single phase of the hermetic motor is
shown in Fig. 1, which has the following lumped parameters: the phase leakage inductance Ld , the
capacitance C1 representing the effect of the distributed capacitive coupling between the input leads
to the ground, the capacitance Cg representing the winding-to-ground distributed capacitances, and
the equivalent resistance Re representing the iron loss in the core and frame of the motor. These
parameters do not include the skin effect for the stator and rotor leakage inductances. It should
be underline that all the values of these parameters have to be referred to a single star-connected
phase.
This high frequency model of the hermetic motor based on lumped parameters should be ac-
curate over the frequency range from a few kilohertz up to several million hertz. By adopting
such a simplified model, using more parasitic parameter is avoided, and consequently any network
simulation program can be used to analyze it without any problem. This model will be used in
simulation so that the conducted emission can be optimally analyzed.
2.2. The Extraction Method
The parameters in the above model are very difficult to calculate because the motor is hermetic and
no concrete information on its structure is available. So an extraction method based on experiment
has to be used.
Firstly, an impedance frequency characteristic of the motor can be obtained by connecting the
three phase terminals together and measuring between the terminals and the grounding, since the
motor under research has a star connection, and its frame is grounded whereas the neutral point of
the three phase windings is not connected to the ground. The measured characteristic of the motor
are considered as the impedance-frequency characteristic of the equivalent circuit in Fig. 1. Then,
the parameters in the circuit can be obtained from the measured curve by applying a least-squared
data fitting procedure.
Since the frequency components higher than 1MHz are not able to deeply penetrate in the
motor windings, and the parasitic capacitances play a dominant role at lower frequency [3], so the
impedance-frequency characteristic can be measured over the frequency range from 1 kHz to 1MHz
by using an impedance analyzer.
2.3. Extracting the HF Parameters of the Motor in Two States
2.3.1. Measurement of the Impedance ZW G (f )
The impedance ZW G (f ) (where f is the frequency) between the nodes W and G in Fig. 1 can be
obtained by measuring between the three phase terminals connected together and the grounding
terminal with an impedance analyzer, with a floating motor neutral terminal.
2.3.2. A Least-squared Data Fitting
A least-squared data fitting procesure is applied to the measured curve to obtain the parameters
of the motor. The calculation needs to be carried out in complex domain, and an adequate choice
of the initialization values of these parameters is very important to obtain a good fitting of the
measured data. The parameters obtained are shown in Table 1. The measured impedance-frequency
960 PIERS Proceedings, Xian, China, March 2226, 2010

Table 1: The HF parameters of the hermetic motor.

Parameter C1 (nF) Cg (nF) Re () Ld (H)

Value 0.11 22.2 1242.5 13.0

1800
Measurement
1600
Simulation
1400

1200

1000

800

600

400

200

0 3 4 5 6
10 10 10 10
Frequency(Hz)

Figure 2: The measured and simulation impedance frequency characteristics curves.

characteristic of the motor and the one obtained by simulation with the parameter values in Table 1
are shown in Fig. 2. An agreement between them is well evident.
2.3.3. Comparison of the Parameters in Two States
The above impedance-frequency curve of the motor is measured when the air conditioner stops
working, and the fluorocarbon in the motor is liquid. But the fluorocarbon is gaseous when the
air conditioner is working normally. Since the dielectric constant of the gas is usually smaller than
that of the liquid, the value of the parameter Cg when the air conditioner is working should be
smaller than that extracted by measurement when the fluorocarbon is liquid. So, in order to obtain
accurate parameter values, it is expected to measure the impedance-frequency curve of the motor
when the air conditioner is working together with the motor.
However, it is impossible to measure the characteristic in such a condition, because high voltages
exist on the motor and the instrument cannot endure them. An alternate extraction method is
adopted. The impedance-frequency curve is measured when the fluorocarbon is entirely exhausted
and the air fills in the motor, which can be considered as quite close to the situation that the
fluorocarbon is gaseous. The same method as mentioned above is used to extract the parameters
of motor in this state, and the results are shown in Table 2.
It can be seen from Tables 1 and 2 that there are some differences between the parameters
measured in the above two states. The most distinguished one occurs in the parameter Cg : its
value in the state that the fluorocarbon is exhausted is much smaller than the one in the state that
the fluorocarbon is liquid, whereas the difference of the other parameters is no more than 10%.

Table 2: The parameters of the hermetic motor (without fluorocarbon).

Parameter C1 (nF) Cg (nF) Re () Ld (H)

Value 0.10 5.89 1180.4 13.8

3. ANALYSIS AND VERIFICATION OF THE HF PARAMETERS OF THE MOTOR

It is difficult to verify the effectiveness of the motor model as an analysis tool of the conducted
emission by examining itself alone, so an alternative method should be used. The former paper [7]
has constructed the model of the propagation path in the same three phase inverter (without taking
into account the propagation path of the motor), and the model has been proved to be effective
and accurate by simulations and experiments. Hence the model of the motor developed above can
be added to the existing circuit model of the propagation path to form an equivalent circuit, and
then the motor model can be verified by comparing the simulation results of the emission with the
experiment one for the whole equivalent circuit. The circuit model of the whole propagation path
is shown in Fig. 3, where the HF equivalent circuit model of the motor is shown in the dashed-line.
Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Xian, China, March 2226, 2010 961

1 2 1 2 1 1 2
L32 L4 L23 R31 R21
R7 C21
L33 C7 L28 L16 R20 C18
1 2 1 2 1 2
V1 L11 C25
C28 C29 C31 C30 C27
2
C44 1 2 L15 R24 C17
L12 1 2

R35 R36 R37 R39 R26 C26

R38 L7 R9 R27
1 2 1 2
L24 R32

K_Linear K K2
C9 COUPLING = 0.998
0

C19
R33
L27 R23 C45 L31
V4 V3 1 1 2 2 1
1
L36
L35
D8 D7
R47
R43
Motor model 2 L30 R34 L29 R22
2 C47 C48 1 2 1 2

L39 D5 C22 C20

C51 1 2 R41 R42 D6

R46
1 2
L37 V2
C52 R48

R44 R50 R40

C49 L38
1 2 1 2
C50 L34
R45
R51 V5 C46

Figure 3: The HF equivalent circuit model of the propagation path.

80 80 80

70 70 70

60 60 60

50 1 50 50

dBuV
dBuV
dBuV

40 40 40

30 30 30

20 20 20

10 10 10

0 0 0 0 1
0 1 0 1
10 10 10 10 10 10
Frequency (MHz) Frequency (MHz) Frequency(MHz)

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 4: The spectrums obtained by simulation and measurement, (a) fluorocarbon in liquid state, (b)
without fluorocarbon, (c) measurement result.

Using the model shown in Fig. 3, the effects of the motor parameters on the emission are analyzed
by simulation. The results indicate that the parameter Cg is the essential parameter of the motor,
and also the important parameter to affect the characteristics of the propagation path. The overall
magnitude of the emission spectrum changes a little with the value of Cg , whereas the frequency
of the peak point of the spectrum varies a lot, and becomes higher when the value gets smaller.
The parameter Ld has a little effect on the propagation path, and the parameters Re and C1 nearly
have no effect.
The simulation results of the conducted emission spectrum to the distribution network are shown
in Figs. 4(a) and (b) with the parameters of the motor shown in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. It
can be seen that the shape and tendency of the two spectrums approximately match with each
other. There is a peak point in each spectrum (indicated by the dashed circle in Fig. 4), and the
magnitudes of the two peak points are almost the same, but the frequencies at which the peak
occurs are quite different: one is bout 1.55 MHz, and the other is about 2.4 MHz.
The corresponding spectrum obtained by measurement when the motor is working normally is
shown in Fig. 4(c). It can be seen that the simulation spectrum with the parameters of the motor
without fluorocarbon (i.e., entirely exhausted) approximately matches with the measurement one
in general, and the frequencies at which the peak occurs are almost the same, about 2.4 MHz and
2.45 MHz in the simulated and measured spectrums, respectively. This indicates that the HF model
of the motor and its parameters extracted in the state that the fluorocarbon is entirely exhausted
are effective, and the circuit model of the whole propagation path of the three phase converter unit
are valid.
962 PIERS Proceedings, Xian, China, March 2226, 2010

4. CONCLUSIONS
The HF equivalent circuit model of the hermetic motor is established, and its parameters are
extracted from the impedance-frequency characteristics of the motor obtained by measurement in
two states: the fluorocarbon in the motor is liquid and it is completely exhausted. The model
is added to the equivalent circuit of the propagation path of the inverter so that a model of the
whole propagation path is set up. The effect of the motor parameters on the conducted emission
is investigated by simulation, which indicates that the capacitance of the winding to ground is the
essential parameter. A comparison is made between the emission spectrums obtained by simulation
and the measured spectrum. The simulated spectrum with the parameters in the state that the
fluorocarbon is entirely exhausted approximately match with the measured one in general, and the
peaks in the two spectrums have almost the same magnitude and frequency, which shows that the
model and the parameters of the hermetic motor developed in this paper are effective and credible,
and the measurement undertaken when the fluorocarbon is exhausted is an adequate substitute for
that when the fluorocarbon is gaseous.
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