The Effects of Load Types on The Behavior of

AC Motor Drives During Voltage Sags

R a n C a o , Student Member. IEEE, and E. R . Collins, Jr., Member, IEEE

Abstract-Voltage sags are B frequent cause of disrupted

operations far many industrial processes. This paper analyzes the
effects of dillerenl load types on the behavior of AC motor drives
during voltage sags. Voltage sags cause a voltage drop on the DC-
bus of a drive, which may cause the drive lo misoperate or trip M,"r!abib%emdwe
online. The tripping or failure of a drive due to a voltage sag
affects the output torque of a drivc-fed induction motor and, thus Fig. 1. Diagram of the typical drive-motor-load system
causes the connected load to operate abnormally. The impact of
voltage sags on B load depends on the behavior of the drive, the Many AC motor drives are sensitive to voltage sags. A sag
lype of load, the motor's inertia, etc. This paper dirrurncs on the three-phase source voltage causes a voltage drop on the
mathematical models for a drive, induction motor and various DC bus of a drive, which can cause a drive to trip omine. The
loads. It explores torque and speed variations of constant, linear effects of voltage sags on AC drives and the sensitivity of
and quadratic loads during a voltage sag and the subsequent drives to voltage sags are discussed in several papers [ I ] - [3].
voltage drop on DC-bus of the drive. After a DC-link voltage drop or tripping of a drive, the
terminal voltage of an induction motor will decrease causing a
Index Term-Voltage rags, load characteristic, pawcr quality,
AC motor drive, induction motor. drop in output torque and, thus, a drop in speed. The
mechanical loads attached to the motor will be consequently
1. INTRODUCTION impacted by this disturbance, some of which will be unable to

v OLTAGE sags are a frequent cause of disrupted

operations for many industrial processes, especially those
using modem -electronic equipment that are sensitive to
tolerate the variations in speed and torque due to the sag.
There are many factors that affect the behavior of loads
during a voltage sag. such as load torque characteristics,
inertia, .friction, etc. Furthermore, the behavior of the load
short duration voltage variations. AC motor drives are during the disturbance is of critical importance. For example,
among the most common power electronic based a manufacturing facility might not care about the actual motor
equipment, many of which have a three-stage topology: torque changes during a sag; instead the process variation and
diode rectifier. DC-link or bus and an inverter. The three- effect on product quality is vitally imponant. The severity of a
phase AC voltage is fed to the rectifier which creates a DC voltage sag and its resultant effect on the load and mechanical
voltage across the capacitor. The DC voltage is inverted to process are thus a big concern of utility customers.
an AC voltage of variable frequency and magnitude, most This paper discusses mathematical models for a drive,
commonly by the means of pulse width modulation induction motor and various loads. Based on these
(PWM). The output AC power of a drive is supplied to a mathematical models, the effects of tripping and DC voltage
three-phase induction motor which drives the connected drops on constant, linear and quadratic loads under different
mechanical load, such as a fan, pump, CNC machine or inertial conditions are explored. Simulation results reveal the
another process and its controls. The typical drive-motor- behavior of these loads under the voltage sags.
load system is shown in Fig. 1.
11. MATHEMATICAL
MODEL AND IMPLEMENTATION
A mathematic model of an AC adjustable speed drive
(ASD), motor, and mechanical load system is developed in this
Both authors ore will1 Dcpvnment of Electncal and Computer section. These models are built for use with modeling and
Engineering. Clemson Unwersiry. Clemson, SC 296344915 USA.(emuil: analysis tools such as MatlabiSimulinkO.
Ran Coo at [email protected]. R. Collins at colline(~rlemson.eddu)
A. Induction nioror model
The induction motor is built using dqO analysis in an
arbitrary common reference frame (41. The motor is assumed
to have balanced windings and balanced input voltages from
the inverter, thus malang the zero-sequence components
become zero. This assumption is valid during voltage sags
since the drive's inverter produces balanced voltage to the

353
motor, even if the ac input to the rectifier is unbalanced. The Ad,= L , i , + Lmid3 (8)
DC-link de-couples the unbalance of the input voltage from where
the inverter. L,, is magnetizing inductance,
In the dq reference frame rotating at an arbitraly speed, the
electrical system equations are as follows: L, is stator self-inductance, which is equal to the sum of
magnetizing inductance and respective leakage inductance
(I) ( L , + L,x),and
L, is stator-referred rotor self-inductance, which is equal to
(*) sum of magnetizing inductance and respective leakage
inductance ( L , + L,,).
d.2,
Vq, =R,i,, +(U, -U,)&, +- The electromagnetic torque equation is given by:
dr
d.2,
V, =&, -(o,- w r ) & +-
dr where P is the number of poles.
where The mathematical model of the induction motor can be
V,, V, is the q, d axis stator voltage, represented in a block diagram, as shown in the Fig. 2,
V,, , V,, is the q, d axis rotor voltage, according to the above equations. This block diagram is
useful for analysis in computer tools such as SimulinkO.
Avs, Ad, is the q , d axis stator flux leakage, The inputs to the model are the stator voltages v,
, the
,Iq,, A, is the q. d axis rotor flux leakage, rotor speed w, , and the reference frame speed 0,. and the
. .
iq, , ids is the q, d axis stator current, output from the model are electromagnetic developed torque
i,, , ,i is the q, d axis rotor current,
q,,and the stator current vector i, . The matrixes K and T are
defined as follows:
6Js is the speed of reference frame, and
w, is the rotor speed.
The flux linkage equations for the motor are:
K=[p ol]
A,, = L,i, + L,i,,
A, = L,id, + L , i ,
A,, = L,i,, + Lmiqi

Fig. 2. Block Diagram of mathematical model afan induction motor

354
B. AC motor drive model 2) Response ofthe DC Link
The mathematical model of a drive depends on the type of When a voltage sag is applied to a three-phase rectifier, no
control scheme used by the drive and model of tile matter whether it is balanced or unbalanced, will cause the
induction There are several commonly used D C - w capacitor 10 discharge. The rate of discharge is
strategies: v ~ ~ control,
~ ~ slip H ~ control, air gap nux
/ speed directly related to the capacitor size and the energy transferred
by the inverter to the motor. The capacitor will discharge until
control and vector control, etc. Fig. 3 presents a block
an equilibrium is reached between the input voltage and the
diagram mathematical model of the drive based on the often-
load on the rectifier if the sag is sustained. Most AC motor
used, open-loop, constant Volts/Hz control scheme.
drives will trip due to undervoltage protection when the DC-
I ) PWM and Volts/Hertz Implementation bus voltage drops below a threshold value. (For many drives
The block diagram of the drive is showllin Fig. 3. This the authors have tested, this threshold is found be about
model takes a speed command 0’.v,, is the offset voltage in 15%to below nominal),
P.U. to overcome the stator resistive drop. The sum of v, and 3) Determination of Time to the Trip Level
generates the magnitude ofthe command voltage which is For most drives, a user-settable or hard-wired undervoltage
converted a reference sinusoid. This sinusoid is scaled by trip point on the DCdink iS established. This level will be
the V/N= ratio to yield a modulation index. The PWM called V!,;,.. During normal operation, the drive’s DC-link
switching pattem is created by a sine-triangle comparator. In a Capacitor Will charge to a value nearly equal to the peak of the
real drive, this pattern would be fed the transistor gates in input line-to-line voltage. This value will be called the pre-sag
the inverter and the magnitude of the inverter’s output PWM DC-bus Voltage V,,,<. The DC-link capacitance is labeled C .
waveshape would be dictated by the DC-link voltage. In this During a three-phase sag where the input voltage drops below
model, the switching is not initially scaled by the DC- a level which would forward-bias the rectifier, all of the energy
link voltage. Instead. the pattem is fed to an “abc to dq” delivered to the motor is provided by the capacitor. If the
converter and then scaled by the DC-link voltage. The effect motor is operating in steady-state, the Power consumed by the
on the motor is no different than the way a real motor would load should be constant if the drive does not trip or engage in a
see the sag: the amplitude of the PWM switching pattem of software ride-through scheme. The ride through time of the
the inverter will be proportional to the DC-link voltage. drive is f . The encrm taken by the load during the ride
Finally, dq voltages are transformed into quantities in the through is:
arbitrary frame by using T“ , which are then fed into model of
jpdl= P j d t = P I , =-CY;,?
1 --cy;,,
1 , (13)
the induction motor. The transformation matrix T‘ is defined 2 2
as: where P is the load of the DC-bus. From (13) the ride-through

T‘ =[
cos0,
-sine,
sins,
cost?, 1
where 6, is the angle between the stationary reference frame
(12)
time t,, is

t,,
C
=-(P
2P
-Y2 )
rip
(14)

and the arbitrary reference frame.

Fig. 3. Block Dirgnm ofmalhsmalical model ofAC motor drive

355
I f r is defined as the ratio of !-',,w'and that is, the inertia and friction, the electromechanical equation is given
by:
dw
T,,=J-+T,+BO
(19)
" P" dt
which should be constant for most situations. The ride-though where
time t,, then can be expressed by T, = the electromagnetic torque developed by the motor,
T, = ow2for quadratic load,
T, = kw for linear load,
If the power output to the load is constant during a sag, the T, = c for constant load,
power input to the inverter should remain nearly constant. a ,c , k are load coefficients,
Since the inverter draws a high-frequency DC current from the J is the moment of inertia of motor and load
DC-link, the inverter looks resistive to the DC-link and can be w is the motor's rotational speed
modeled as a linear resistance R. Therefore,R is defined as B is the friction coefficient of motor and load
the Thevenin equivalent resistance of inverterimotorlload
The acceleration component is the rate of change of speed and
connected to the DC bus, and
is often called a, where
R,v.- P
2

a=-dw (20)
dt
By substituting (17) into (16). the following equation is In steady-state, this term is zero. During a voltage sag, it is
observed
this term combined with the inertia J which determine the
RC
r,, =-(1-r 2
) behavior of the load during and immediately after the sag
2 occurs. Equation (19) can be expressed by a block diagram as
Equation (18) provides an excellent method for determining shown in Fig. 4.
the ride-through time to reach the trip level of an ac drive if the
I
loading, capacitance, and nominal and trip-threshold voltages
are known.
I ' L

Note too that during the time prior to tripping, the ac

drive's DC-link experiences an essentially exponential decay
of its voltage. If the sag is severely unbalanced. then the
exponential decay might be altered by a serious ripple voltage
on the DC-link.
The drive's response to a sag can be separated into two Fig. 4. Block Diagram of mathematical model of load
distinct parts. The first mode is the region during which the
motor operates in steady-state and energy is being removed where H is the inertia constant of motor-load combination.
from the capacitor. The time of this interval will be no more This inertia constant is directly proportional to the actual load
than I,, computed previously. Once the trip level of the drive is inertia J using the following relationship:
reached, a second mode occurs. In this mode, the type of ride-
through scheme employed on the drive will determine the
overall response. Drives with energy recapture can extracl
energy from the rotating system's inertia during a sag to From a practical point-of-view, determining the coefficients
prolong the energy storage time in the capacitor. Some drives (such as a, c, and k) in the load's torque expressions is very
will shut off the inverter and coast, others will simply difficult and may have to be done experimentally.
decelerate or stop altogether. "
If we focus our effort on the time prior to t," the decay in 111. SIMULATION RESULTS
the DC-link voltage should be nearly exponential since the
inverter looks like a constant resistance in steady-state. The mathematical models of the drive, induction motor and
Therefore our model will use this mathematical estimate of the loads discussed in previous section are implemented using
voltage profile of the DC-link during a voltage sag. While any MATLAB, and simulations are carried out to reveal the
load mal-behavior during this mode will cause the value of R, behavior of the loads during voltage sags. The drive control is
to change, this effect is thought to be minimal for this analysis. set to "trip" when the DC-bus voltage drops below 80 percent
C. Load model of its nominal value, and restarting immediately after the trip
Although there are many different loads, many could be when the voltage comes back. The inverter output is zero
generalized into one of three types which could be described during the "trip" interval. The control of the drive is based on
by a polynomial - constant, linear and quadratic - according an open loop constant Volts/Hz scheme and the time constant
7 of thedc-link capacitor and inverter section is selected to be
the relation between torque and speed. Accounting for both
200ms.

356
 A standard 5hp three-phase induction motor IS selected for
i i . . . . . .
the tests. Its mrameters are: 5hD. 208V. 60Hz. Y-connected. 4 I
I I
poles, 0.86 i f and 82% effic'iency. ' T h e electrical model
parameters are: R,=0.277R, R,=O.I83R, Xn,=2O.3n,
Xl,=0.544Q, Xl,=0.841Q, J,,=O.0272kglmZ, and the base
frequency is 60Hi [4].
The motor is operated in steady-state conditions at rated
speed and full-load torque. The motor's frictional losses are
Sag bepin. Sapcndr
neglected.
A. Three-phase balanced sag
For the first test, assume that the inertia of load and motor
is three times the motor inertia, i.e. J=3Jn,. A 50% balanced

Pk
voltage sag is applied to the drive's input for 10 cycle duration 02 ;
starting at F 1 . 4 ~ .Fig. 5 shows the DC-bus voltage during the
14 t i 1.55 1'6 1s; 1,;s i.a t.i5
sag. The capacitor discharges when the sag occurs due to ,,me (3)
energy being consumed by the inverterlmotorlload. The
voltage decays with a time cnnstant 5 = 200ms until it drops Fig. 6. Torque (upper) and speed (hottam) of the three different kinds of
below the absolute value of the AC voltage will forward-bias loads during the 50% balanced sag. Quadratic load (solid line). linear load
the rectifier. The drive will trip when the DC-bus voltage (dash-dol line) and const~nlload (dotted line) with J=3J,.
drops below 80% of its normal value. The ride through time,
in this case, can be seen to be less than 3 cycles due to the
short time constant (i.e., relatively large load on the motor for ii , , . . , , , , , ,
the cauacitor size). The load connected to the induction motor
will definitely be impacted due to the tripping of drive. The
speeds of constant load torque, linear load torque and D 1 ....'F ,.. ~

. .--- .....
-.-
- ,~- ~

.
,~.
,..~
c :-
~
- ~--- - -- -
~

~ .
-.-
---
~
quadratic load torque are shown in the Fig. 6 . J
0.9

0 ~ ' ~ " " ' ' '

1.3 1.c 145 15 1.55 1 6 165 I? t?5 18 185
,/me (I]
01 Fig. 7. Torque (upper) and speed (hattam) of the three different kinds of

Fig. 5 . DC-bus voltage ofdrive during the balanced 50% voltage sag Compared with Fig. 6 the torque and speed variations of all
three types of loads are reduced clearly by the larger inertia.
For each load, the speed almost doesn't change right after The larger the inertia, the more energy contained in the load.
the voltage sag occurs at -1.4s due to the drive's stored Therefore, loads with larger inertia are less sensitive to the
energy in the capacitor and the load's inertia. ARer the drive tripping of drives.
trips, the load speed and torque drop drastically until voltage
comes back after 10 cycles. Note that the speed of the B. Unbalancedsag
constant load drops the most and it takes the longest time to Several power quality studies have shown that voltage sags
recover when the sag recovers. This is because the load torque are typically unbalanced and have relatively shallow drops in
remains constant during the event independent of spccd. The m-znitude. Now, suppose that there is 80% voltage sag in
other two loads decrease their torque as the speed drops. phases A and B for IO cycles starting at t=l.4s, and Phase C
Next, the impact of inertia is explored. All the parameters has nominal voltage. The DC-bus voltage during this sag is
are unchanged except the inertia is doubled from J = 3 h , to shown in Fig. 8.
am, The 50% balanced voltage sag without a phase jump still
starts at -1.4s. the speed and torque for each of the three types
of loads are shown in the Fig. 7.

357
 affected the least and the constant torque loads are affected the
most. This is because the reduction in speed causes the linear
and quadratic loads to consume less power during the event.
A balanced voltage sag is much more likely to trip an ac ASD
than unbalanced sags. In some cases the unbalanced voltage
sags the not cause the DC-bus voltage of drive to drop below
its trip level; the effect is primarily an increase in the dc-link
.and PWM ripple. If the drive stays online and does not trip,
the effect on the load is relatively minor. This is especially
true for quadratic type loads (fans, centrifugal pumps, etc.)
with relatively high inertias. Considering that most voltage
P
sags are unbalanced, it is possible to improve the drive's ride
through capability by adding more capacitance or other energy
storage devices. However, if the cause of tripping is the
unbalanced current due to the unbalanced sag, other measures
Fig. 8. U€-bur voltage of drive during a two-phase 80%vollage sag
should be taken to mitigate it since increasing the capacitance
might increase the unbalanced current. .
The DC-bus voltage of the drive is quite different from the Tests are being done to compare the simulation results to
50% balanced sag. It does not drop below 80% of trip level field measurements. The control scheme used by the drive
since the diode rectifier responds to phase-to-phase voltages during a sag wiil have a great influence on the exact response.
and two of these i s higher than the trip level. The ripple on the This paper shows the effects of loading on a standard
dc-link increases, but the voltage does not drop below the trip VoltdHertz PWM drive and should be representative of other
level. Therefore, the drive runs throughout the event and the situations.
load does not experience a great fluctuation in speed since it
only sees an increase in the ripple on the PWM waveform. V. REFERENCES
The torque and speed variations of three load types with
H=0.3p.u. for this sag are shown in Fig. 9.
[I] E. R. Collins and A. Mansoor. " EITeas of voltage sags on AC molov
drives". i n Proc. IYY7 IEEE Textile. Fiber. and Film Industry
Technical Co+cncc. pp: 9. 7
121 M. H. J. Bollcn and L D. Zhang, "Analysis o f voltage tolerance of AC
adjustable-speed drives". IEEE Trans. l n d w t y Application. ~01.36.
"0.3. pp. 904-910. MayIJune 2000
131 L.Canrad. K. Little. and C. Grigg. "Predicling and preventing problems
associated with remote faull-slsaring w b g e dips". IEEE Trans.
lndusrty Appltcario,i. ~01.26.pp.167-172, JaniFeh. 1991
I I I L I I S I I I I I 141 R. Krishnan. Elecrric Motor Drives Modeling.. Analysis and Conlml.
?.a1.4 1.45 15 1.55 1.6 165 7.7 175 I.€ 1,s Prentice Hall. New J-y. 2001
[SI A. Mansoor and R. 1. Fenaro. "Characterizing ASD power quality
applicrtion issucs", i n Proc. PQA-U7 Nonh Amerrun, Columbus, OH,
Mar. 3-6. 1997.
161 M . H. J. Bollcn. "Characterization o f voltage sage' experienced by three.
p 0.6 phase adjumble-speed drives". IEEE Trans. Power De1iver.v. vol. 12.
CO, pp. 1666-1672. Oct. 1997.
0.2
VI. BIOGRAPHIES
?% 14 145 I5 155 1 6 165 I7 175 I 6 185
lime (I)

Fig. 9. Torque (upper) and speed (bottom) of the three different kinds of Ran Caa received his BSc. and M S c . degrees from Southeast U n i v m i t y .
Nan&. P.R. China i n 1997 and 2001 respectively. Now he is pursuing his
loads dueng phase A and B 80% sag. Quadratic load (solid line), linear load
Ph.D degree i n Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson
(dash-dot line) and con~tanlload (dotted line) with J=3Jm
University, Clemran. SC USA. His research interests are i n p a w a quality,
power electronics and motor driver.
From Fig. 9 the disturbance on speed and load torque can

any problem.
.
University. Clemson SC. H i s research infercis include electric machinery
power eleclr0nics. rdjurcsblc spced drives. and power quality. Dr. Collins hns
won numenus teaching awards and actively teaches at the university and has
Iv. CONCLUSIONS uiven several warkshom . to orofesrional
. encineem. He is a member of sevcml
unless the AC drives trip the speed of the E E E societies and has served i n various ofTices of the Piedmont Section of
the IEEE. He presently serves an a number of E E E working gmupr related
mechanical loads in an ac drive system remains relatively to power qnalily and is the Chair of E E E Standard 1159.
unaffected during voltage sags. The quadratic loads are

358