Electric Motor K-12 Projects & Experiments for Lesson Plans & Science Fair Projects

An electric motor uses electrical energy to produce mechanical energy. The reverse process, that of using mechanical energy to produce electrical energy, is accomplished by a generator or dynamo. Traction motors used on locomotives often perform both tasks if the locomotive is equipped with dynamic brakes. Electric motors are found in household appliances such as fans, refrigerators, washing machines, pool pumps, floor vacuums, and fan-forced ovens.

Most electric motors work by electromagnetism, but motors based on other electromechanical phenomena, such as electrostatic forces and the piezoelectric effect and thermal motors, also exist. The fundamental principle upon which electromagnetic motors are based is that there is a mechanical force on any current-carrying wire contained within a magnetic field. The force is described by the Lorentz force law and is perpendicular to both the wire and the magnetic field. Most magnetic motors are rotary, but linear motors also exist. In a rotary motor, the rotating part (usually on the inside) is called the rotor, and the stationary part is called the stator. The rotor rotates because the wires and magnetic field are arranged so that a torque is developed about the rotor's axis. The motor contains electromagnets that are wound on a frame. Though this frame is often called the armature, that term is often erroneously applied. Correctly, the armature is that part of the motor across which the input voltage is supplied. Depending upon the design of the machine, either the rotor or the stator can serve as the armature.

History and development

The principle of conversion of electrical energy into mechanical energy by electromagnetic means was demonstrated by the British scientist Michael Faraday in 1821 and consisted of a free-hanging wire dipping into a pool of mercury. A permanent magnet was placed in the middle of the pool of mercury. When a current was passed through the wire, the wire rotated around the magnet, showing that the current gave rise to a circular magnetic field around the wire. This motor is often demonstrated in school physics classes, but brine (salt water) is sometimes used in place of the toxic mercury. This is the simplest form of a class of electric motors called homopolar motors. A later refinement is the Barlow's Wheel. These were demonstration devices, unsuited to practical applications due to limited power.

The first commutator-type direct-current electric motor capable of a practical application was invented by the British scientist William Sturgeon in 1832. Following Sturgeon's work, a commutator-type direct-current electric motor made with the intention of commercial use was built by the American Thomas Davenport and patented in 1837. Although several of these motors were built and used to operate equipment such as a printing press, due to the high cost of primary battery power, the motors were commercially unsuccessful and Davenport went bankrupt. Several inventors followed Sturgeon in the development of DC motors but all encountered the same cost issues with primary battery power. No electricity distribution had been developed at the time. Like Sturgeon's motor, there was no practical commercial market for these motors.

The modern DC motor was invented by accident in 1873, when Zénobe Gramme connected the dynamo he had invented to a second similar unit, driving it as a motor. The Gramme machine was the first electric motor that was successful in the industry.

In 1888 Nikola Tesla invented the first practicable AC motor and with it the polyphase power transmission system. Tesla continued his work on the AC motor in the years to follow at the Westinghouse company.

Categorisation of electric motors

The classic division of electric motors has been that of DC types vs AC types. This is more a de facto convention, rather than a rigid distinction. For example, many classic DC motors run happily on AC power.

The ongoing trend toward electronic control further muddles the distinction, as modern drivers have moved the commutator out of the motor shell. For this new breed of motor, driver circuits are relied upon to generate sinusoidal AC drive currents, or some approximation of. The two best examples are: the brushless DC motor, and the stepping motor, both being polyphase AC motors requiring external electronic control.

A more clear distinction is between synchronous and asynchronous types. In the synchronous types, the rotor rotates in synchrony with the oscillating field or current (eg. permanent magnet motors). In contrast, an asynchronous motor is designed to slip; the most ubiquitous example being the common AC induction motor which must slip in order to generate torque.

DC motors

A DC motor is designed to run on DC electric power. Two examples of pure DC designs are Michael Faraday's homopolar motor (which is uncommon), and the ball bearing motor, which is (so far) a novelty. By far the most common DC motor types are the brushed and brushless types, which use internal and external commutation respectively to create an oscillating AC current from the DC source -- so they are not purely DC machines in a strict sense.

Brushed DC motors

The classic DC motor design generates an oscillating current in a wound rotor with a split ring commutator, and either a wound or permanent magnet stator. A rotor consists with a coil wound around a rotor which isthen powered by any type of battery.

Brushless DC motors

Many of the limitations of the classic commutator DC motor are due to the need for brushes to press against the commutator. This creates friction. At higher speeds, brushes have increasing difficulty in maintaining contact. Brushes may bounce off the irregularities in the commutator surface, creating sparks. This limits the maximum speed of the machine. The current density per unit area of the brushes limits the output of the motor. The imperfect electric contact also causes electrical noise. Brushes eventually wear out and require replacement, and the commutator itself is subject to wear and maintenance. The commutator assembly on a large machine is a costly element, requiring precision assembly of many parts.

These problems are eliminated in the brushless motor. In this motor, the mechanical "rotating switch" or commutator/brushgear assembly is replaced by an external electronic switch synchronised to the rotor's position. Brushless motors are typically 85-90% efficient, whereas DC motors with brushgear are typically 75-80% efficient.

Midway between ordinary DC motors and stepper motors lies the realm of the brushless DC motor. Built in a fashion very similar to stepper motors, these often use a permanent magnet external rotor, three phases of driving coils, one or more Hall effect sensors to sense the position of the rotor, and the associated drive electronics. The coils are activated, one phase after the other, by the drive electronics as cued by the signals from the Hall effect sensors. In effect, they act as three-phase synchronous motors containing their own variable-frequency drive electronics. A specialized class of brushless DC motor controllers utilize EMF feedback through the main phase connections instead of Hall effect sensors to determine position and velocity. These motors are used extensively in electric radio-controlled vehicles, and referred to by modelists as outrunner motors (since the magnets are on the outside).

Brushless DC motors are commonly used where precise speed control is necessary, computer disk drives or in video cassette recorders the spindles within CD, CD-ROM (etc.) drives, and mechanisms within office products such as fans, laser printers and photocopiers. They have several advantages over conventional motors:

Modern DC brushless motors range in power from a fraction of a watt to many kilowatts. Larger brushless motors up to about 100 kW rating are used in electric vehicles. They also find significant use in high-performance electric model aircraft.

Coreless DC motors

Nothing in the design of any of the motors described above requires that the iron (steel) portions of the rotor actually rotate; torque is exerted only on the windings of the electromagnets. Taking advantage of this fact is the coreless DC motor, a specialized form of a brush or brushless DC motor. Optimized for rapid acceleration, these motors have a rotor that is constructed without any iron core. The rotor can take the form of a winding-filled cylinder inside the stator magnets, a basket surrounding the stator magnets, or a flat pancake (possibly formed on a printed wiring board) running between upper and lower stator magnets. The windings are typically stabilized by being impregnated with epoxy resins.

Because the rotor is much lighter in weight (mass) than a conventional rotor formed from copper windings on steel laminations, the rotor can accelerate much more rapidly, often achieving a mechanical time constant under 1 ms. This is especially true if the windings use aluminum rather than the heavier copper. But because there is no metal mass in the rotor to act as a heat sink, even small coreless motors must often be cooled by forced air.

These motors were commonly used to drive the capstan(s) of magnetic tape drives and are still widely used in high-performance servo-controlled systems, like humanoid robotic systems, industrial automation, medical devices, etc.

Universal motors

A variant of the wound field DC motor is the universal motor. The name derives from the fact that it may use AC or DC supply current, although in practice they are nearly always used with AC supplies. The principle is that in a wound field DC motor the current in both the field and the armature (and hence the resultant magnetic fields) will alternate (reverse polarity) at the same time, and hence the mechanical force generated is always in the same direction. In practice, the motor must be specially designed to cope with the AC current (impedance must be taken into account, as must the pulsating force), and the resultant motor is generally less efficient than an equivalent pure DC motor. Operating at normal power line frequencies, the maximum output of universal motors is limited and motors exceeding one kilowatt are rare. But universal motors also form the basis of the traditional railway traction motor in electric railways. In this application, to keep their electrical efficiency high, they were operated from very low frequency AC supplies, with 25 Hz and 16 ²/₃ hertz operation being common. Because they are universal motors, locomotives using this design were also commonly capable of operating from a third rail powered by DC.

The advantage of the universal motor is that AC supplies may be used on motors which have the typical characteristics of DC motors, specifically high starting torque and very compact design if high running speeds are used. The negative aspect is the maintenance and short life problems caused by the commutator. As a result such motors are usually used in AC devices such as food mixers and power tools which are used only intermittently. Continuous speed control of a universal motor running on AC is very easily accomplished using a thyristor circuit, while stepped speed control can be accomplished using multiple taps on the field coil. Household blenders that advertise many speeds frequently combine a field coil with several taps and a diode that can be inserted in series with the motor (causing the motor to run on half-wave rectified AC).

Universal motors can rotate at relatively high revolutions per minute (rpm). This makes them useful for appliances such as blenders, vacuum cleaners, and hair dryers where high-speed operation is desired. Many vacuum cleaner and weed trimmer motors exceed 10,000 rpm, Dremel and other similar miniature grinders will often exceed 30,000 rpm. Motor damage may occur due to overspeed (rpm in excess of design specifications) if the unit is operated with no significant load. On larger motors, sudden loss of load is to be avoided, and the possibility of such an occurrence is incorporated into the motor's protection and control schemes. Often, a small fan blade attached to the armature acts as an artificial load to limit the motor speed to a safe value, as well as provide cooling airflow to the armature and field windings.

With the very low cost of semiconductor rectifiers, some applications that would have previously used a universal motor now use a pure DC motor, sometimes with a permanent magnet field.

AC motors

In 1882, Nikola Tesla identified the rotating magnetic field principle, and pioneered the use of a rotary field of force to operate machines. He exploited the principle to design a unique two-phase induction motor in 1883. In 1885, Galileo Ferraris independently researched the concept. In 1888, Ferraris published his research in a paper to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Turin.

Introduction of Tesla's motor from 1888 onwards initiated what is sometimes referred to as the Second Industrial Revolution, making possible the efficient generation and long distance distribution of electrical energy using the alternating current transmission system, also of Tesla's invention (1888).^[1] Before the invention of the rotating magnetic field, motors operated by continually passing a conductor through a stationary magnetic field (as in homopolar motors).

Tesla had suggested that the commutators from a machine could be removed and the device could operate on a rotary field of force. Professor Poeschel, his teacher, stated that would be akin to building a perpetual motion machine.^[2] Tesla would later attain U.S. Patent 0,416,194 , Electric Motor (December 1889), which resembles the motor seen in many of Tesla's photos. This classic alternating current electro-magnetic motor was an induction motor.

Michail Osipovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky later invented a three-phase "cage-rotor" in 1890. This type of motor is now used for the vast majority of commercial applications.

Components

Torque motors

A torque motor is a specialized form of induction motor which is capable of operating indefinitely at stall (with the rotor blocked from turning) without damage. In this mode, the motor will apply a steady torque to the load (hence the name). A common application of a torque motor would be the supply- and take-up reel motors in a tape drive. In this application, driven from a low voltage, the characteristics of these motors allow a relatively-constant light tension to be applied to the tape whether or not the capstan is feeding tape past the tape heads. Driven from a higher voltage, (and so delivering a higher torque), the torque motors can also achieve fast-forward and rewind operation without requiring any additional mechanics such as gears or clutches. In the computer world, torque motors are used with force feedback steering wheels.

Slip Ring

The slip ring or wound rotor motor is an induction machine where the rotor comprises a set of coils that are terminated in slip rings to which external impedances can be connected. The stator is the same as is used with a standard squirrel cage motor.

By changing the impedance connected to the rotor circuit, the speed/current and speed/torque curves can be altered.

The slip ring motor is used primarily to start a high inertia load or a load that requires a very high starting torque across the full speed range. By correctly selecting the resistors used in the secondary resistance or slip ring starter, the motor is able to produce maximum torque at a relatively low current from zero speed to full speed. A secondary use of the slip ring motor is to provide a means of speed control. Because the torque curve of the motor is effectivley modified by the resistance connected to the rotor circuit, the speed of the motor can be altered. Increasing the value of resistance on the rotor circuit will move the speed of maximum torque down. If the resistance connected to the rotor is increased beyond the point where the maximum torque occurs at zero speed, the torque will be further reduced.

When used with a load that has a torque curve that increases with speed, the motor will operate at the speed where the torque developed by the motor is equal to the load torque. Reducing the load will cause the motor to speed up, and increasing the load will cause the motor to slow down until the load and motor torque are equal. Operated in this manner, the slip losses are dissipated in the secondary resistors and can be very significant. The speed regulation is also very poor.

Stepper motors

Closely related in design to three-phase AC synchronous motors are stepper motors, where an internal rotor containing permanent magnets or a large iron core with salient poles is controlled by a set of external magnets that are switched electronically. A stepper motor may also be thought of as a cross between a DC electric motor and a solenoid. As each coil is energized in turn, the rotor aligns itself with the magnetic field produced by the energized field winding. Unlike a synchronous motor, in its application, the motor may not rotate continuously; instead, it "steps" from one position to the next as field windings are energized and de-energized in sequence. Depending on the sequence, the rotor may turn forwards or backwards.

Simple stepper motor drivers entirely energize or entirely de-energize the field windings, leading the rotor to "cog" to a limited number of positions; more sophisticated drivers can proportionally control the power to the field windings, allowing the rotors to position between the cog points and thereby rotate extremely smoothly. Computer controlled stepper motors are one of the most versatile forms of positioning systems, particularly when part of a digital servo-controlled system.

Stepper motors can be rotated to a specific angle with ease, and hence stepper motors are used in pre-gigabyte era computer disk drives, where the precision they offered was adequate for the correct positioning of the read/write head of a hard disk drive. As drive density increased, the precision limitations of stepper motors made them obsolete for hard drives, thus newer hard disk drives use read/write head control systems based on voice coils.

Stepper motors were upscaled to be used in electric vehicles under the term SRM (switched reluctance machine).

Linear motors

A linear motor is essentially an electric motor that has been "unrolled" so that, instead of producing a torque (rotation), it produces a linear force along its length by setting up a traveling electromagnetic field.

Linear motors are most commonly induction motors or stepper motors. You can find a linear motor in a maglev (Transrapid) train, where the train "flies" over the ground, and in many roller-coasters where the rapid motion of the motorless railcar is controlled by the rail.

Doubly-fed electric motor

Doubly-fed electric motors have two independent multiphase windings that actively participate in the energy conversion process with at least one of the winding sets electronically controlled for variable speed operation. Two is the most active multiphase winding sets possible without duplicating singly-fed or doubly-fed categories in the same package. As a result, doubly-fed electric motors are machines with an effective constant torque speed range that is twice synchronous speed for a given frequency of excitation. This is twice the constant torque speed range as singly-fed electric machines, which have only one active winding set.

A doubly-fed motor allows for a smaller electronic converter but the cost of the rotor winding and slip rings may offset the saving in the power electronics components. Difficulties with controlling speed near synchronous speed limit applications. ^[3]

Singly-fed electric motor

Singly-fed electric machines incorporate a single multiphase winding set that is connected to a power supply. Singly-fed electric machines may be either induction or synchronous. The active winding set can be electronically controlled. Induction machines develop starting torque at zero speed and can operate as standalone machines. Synchronous machines must have auxiliary means for startup, such as a starting induction squirrel-cage winding or an electronic controller. Singly-fed electric machines have an effective constant torque speed range up to synchronous speed for a given excitation frequency.

The induction (asynchronous) motors (i.e., squirrel cage rotor or wound rotor), synchronous motors (i.e., field-excited, permanent magnet or brushless DC motors, reluctance motors, etc.), which are discussed on the this page, are examples of singly-fed motors. By far, singly-fed motors are the predominantly installed type of motors.

Nanotube nanomotor

Researchers at University of California, Berkeley, recently developed rotational bearings based upon multiwall carbon nanotubes. By attaching a gold plate (with dimensions of the order of 100nm) to the outer shell of a suspended multiwall carbon nanotube (like nested carbon cylinders), they are able to electrostatically rotate the outer shell relative to the inner core. These bearings are very robust; devices have been oscillated thousands of times with no indication of wear. These nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are the next step in miniaturization that may find their way into commercial aspects in the future.

Motor calculations - overheating

Overheating of the motor is failure mechanism no 1 of electric motors. To prevent overheating usually the motor is over-dimensioned (the power of the motor is chosen too high). This often leads to bigger and more expensive motors. This excessive over-dimensioning is unnecessary when one exactly knows what the winding temperature of the motor is going to be. In this article is explained how to Avoid overheating and overdimensioning of your motor by determining the exact winding temperature.

Motor standards

The following are major design and manufacturing standards covering electric motors:

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