A Study of Vibroacoustic Performance of Synchronous Motor Drives under Different Operating Conditions

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of temperature changes and the switching strategy of the inverter on the acoustic noise performance of the interior permanent magnet synchronous motor drive system. The proposed approach uses the finite element method to extract a library of knowledge related to the acoustic field of the electric motor under different operating conditions. The paper is sectionalized as follows: Section one introduces the importance of incorporating thermal models in acoustic noise studies by drawing motivation from the paucity of thermo-acoustic materials in the literature; Section two briefly describes how the CAD model is built and how the geometric database is generated from the parameterized model. It also points the reader to the design and simulation assumptions that have been formulated to support the proposed methodology; Section three discusses how the excitation currents are generated and applied to the finite element models to evaluate the multiphysics objectives for the study; finally, Section four presents the simulated results for all the investigated motor designs and provides a detailed discussion of the emerging trends associated with varying the operating temperature and the switching frequency of the inverter circuit.