Vibration Prediction Method of Electric Machines by using Experimental Transfer Function and Magnetostatic Finite Element Analysis

Abstract

This paper concerns the noise and structural vibration caused by rotating electric machines. Special attention is given to the magnetic-force induced vibration response of interior-permanent magnet machines. In general, to accurately predict and control the vibration response caused by the electric machines, it is inevitable to model not only the magnetic force induced by the fluctuation of magnetic fields, but also the structural dynamic characteristics of the electric machines and surrounding structural components. However, due to complicated boundary conditions and material properties of the components, such as laminated magnetic cores and varnished windings, it has been a challenge to compute accurate vibration response caused by the electric machines even after their physical models are available. In this paper, we propose a highly-accurate vibration prediction method that couples experimentally-obtained discrete structural transfer functions and numerically-obtained distributed magnetic-forces. The proposed vibration synthesis methodology has been applied to predict vibration responses of an interior permanent magnet machine. The results show that the predicted vibration response of the electric machine agrees very well with the measured vibration response for several load conditions, for wide frequency ranges.