Automation of Electrical Machines

Electrical machines lab is one of the fundamental lab for the electrical engineering stream. The conventional machines laboratory courses can teach only the motor functionalities and drive concepts like  induction motors and DC motors. During the lab session, the students will vary the voltage and current, using the autotransformer and rheostat to control the speed and load test of the motor. While it is important to teach the conventional motor setups, it is also equally important to give an introductory experience to the motor drives setup, their pulse control & commutation, VFDs, etc. It will enable the students to stay in line with the present industry requirements.

We offer Data Acquisition & Control systems that can be interfaced with external drivers &  motors from industry vendors like Rockwell, Siemens, Kirloskar etc.

The compact RIO (cRIO) based NI embedded control platform gives an option to implement the PWM techniques for the inverters, DC-DC converters, 6 step commutation techniques, special machine control etc. The LabVIEW based graphical programming environment provides an intuitive method for students to acquire, visualize and process the signal from the experiment setup. With the help of these hardware setup, student can get the feel of motors and drives used in the industry.

Automating the Electrical machines lab provides the following benefits to the users. 

  • Rich visualization of voltage, current, speed and other signals
  • Students can observe transients, spikes, phase differences, harmonics, etc. while doing the experiments
  • Open platform for Data acquisition & Control
  • In addition to learning the conventional motor concepts, the students can learn concepts related to PWM, SPWM, SVPWM, 6 step control, PID Control, etc.
  • Vrms, Irms, Apparent power, real power, power factor, harmonics, etc. can be computed by students in LabVIEW, rather than directly reading from the instruments.
  • Simple & powerful graphical programming approach using LabVIEW
  • The same LabVIEW, DAQ and cRIO are also used in industry for implementing test, measurement and control systems.

We can work with end user to customize the experiments for testing the electrical machine. Some of the sample experiments are given below.

  • 3 phase induction motor – speed test
  • 3 phase induction motor – load test
  • 3 phase induction motor – No load and load test
  • NO load and blocked rotor test on three phase induction motor (determination of equivalent circuit parameters)
  • Load test on DC Shunt and compound motors
  • Load test on DC series motor
  •  Speed test on DC shunt motor

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