A Comparison Between Electrical Circuit and Finite Element Modeling Methods for Performance Analysis of a Three-Phase Induction Motor under Voltage Unbalance

Induction motor is the most popular load in the industry, it is very important to study about the effects of voltage quality on induction motor performance. One of the most important voltage quality problems in power system is voltage unbalance. This paper evaluates and compares two methods including finite element method (FEM) and equivalent electrical circuit simulation for investigation of the effects of voltage unbalance conditions on the performance of a three- phase induction motor. For this purpose, a threephase squirrel cage induction motor is simulated using Finite Element Method and equivalent electrical circuit parameters of the FEM model is estimated by genetic algorithm. Then, some unbalanced voltages are applied on the FEM model of the Motor and the resulted power and losses are compared with calculated values using equivalent electrical circuit simulation in same voltage conditions.