IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 38, NO.

2, MARCH 2002 969

Comparison of Induction Machine Stator Vibration

Spectra Induced by Reluctance Forces and
Magnetostriction
Koen Delaere, Ward Heylen, Ronnie Belmans, and Kay Hameyer

Abstract—For rotating electric machines, the reluctance forces be enhanced to encompass magnetostriction [5]. A straight-
(Maxwell stresses) acting on the stator teeth are a major cause of forward finite-element method to capture the magnetostrictive
noise emission. Next to the reluctance forces, magnetostriction is a deformation that is based upon a thermal stress analogy, has
potential cause of additional noise from electric machines. First, a
thermal stress analogy is used to introduce magnetostriction in the been presented earlier [6]. The theoretical background is
finite-element framework. Next, we present the computation and repeated here briefly and is subsequently used to estimate, for
comparison of the stator vibration spectra caused by these two ef- a 45-kW induction machine:
fects separately, by example of a 45-kW induction machine. More- 1) the relative importance of reluctance forces and magne-
over, two kinds of magnetostriction characteristics of the stator
yoke material are compared: a quadratic ( ) curve and a ( ) tostriction with respect to stator deformation;
curve with zero-crossing around 1.5 Tesla. 2) the impact of using materials with different magnetostric-
tive behavior.
Index Terms—Coupled magnetomechanical problems, finite-el-
ement methods, magnetostriction. The isotropic magnetostriction curve

(1)
I. INTRODUCTION
will be referred to as magnetostriction type 1 and the isotropic
N OISE and vibration research has been focusing on
reluctance forces (Maxwell stresses) as the major cause
of noise and vibrations in rotating electric machinery. For non-
curve with zero-crossing around 1.5 tesla (T)

rotating machinery (transformers, inductors), magnetostriction (2)

is the major cause of noise, but also for induction machines,
magnetostriction can be responsible for a considerable part will be referred to as magnetostriction type 2. Both kinds of
of the machine’s noise [1], [2]. The simulation of vibration magnetostriction occur commonly in electric steels. We confine
spectra induced by reluctance forces has been investigated ourselves to two-dimensional (2-D) models, but the concepts
extensively using finite-element models, e.g., [3] and [4], while introduced here are easily extended to three-dimensional finite-
the simulation of magnetostriction effects has been left aside. element models.
This is partly due to the fact that accurate magnetostriction data
are hard to obtain. The magnetostriction of the yoke material II. THERMAL STRESS ANALOGY
also depends on its stress condition, but it is hard to estimate For plane stress , the elastic strain in direction
the stress remaining in the material after a shrink-fit of the yoke is determined by the external stresses and
into the stator housing. Moreover, it is often difficult to embed
this kind of material behavior in (existing) finite-element
software, although this may be resolved with the advent of (3)
powerful methods like Preisach material modeling, which can
where and are the Young and Poisson modulus, respec-
tively. When a material with thermal expansion coefficient
Manuscript received July 5, 2001; revised October 25, 2001. This work is heated, it will exhibit a thermal strain which is added
was supported by the “Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen to the elastic strain in order to give the total strain
(FWOV).” This work was also supported by the Belgian Ministry of Scientific . The elasticity equation (3) is now written as [7]
Research through granting the IUAP P4/20 on Coupled Problems in Elec-
tromagnetic Systems. The research Council of the K. U. Leuven supported
numerical research. The work of K. Delaere was supported by a FWOV
scholarship.
(4)
K. Delaere, R. Belmans, and K. Hameyer are with the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, Department ESAT-ELEN, B3001 Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium (e-mail: The same procedure is valid for magnetostrictive strain
kay.hameyer@esat.kuleuven.ac.be).
W. Heylen is with the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Depart- instead of thermal strain, giving
ment Mechanics-PMA, B3001 Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium (e-mail:
ward.heylen@mech.kuleuven.ac.be).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9464(02)02376-2. (5)

0018-9464/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE

970 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 38, NO. 2, MARCH 2002

(a) (b)
Fig. 1. The magnetostriction forces distribution (b) representing the strain
B
caused by (a) magnetostriction due to the magnetic field , consists of a set of
B B
forces parallel to and a set of forces perpendicular to .

Similarly, the elastic energy of a mechanical finite-element

system is determined by the elastic displacement and the
mechanical stiffness matrix

(6)

where again the elastic displacement is not necessarily

equal to the total displacement , since the material may exhibit
thermal or magnetostrictive expansion. The elastic energy
expressed in terms of total displacement and magnetostrictive Fig. 2. Magnetostrictive material characteristics for isotropic nonoriented 3%
displacement is SiFe (solid lines, as a function of tensile stress) and anisotropic M330-50A
(dashed lines, for rolling and transverse direction).

(7)
when the magnetostrictive deformation is represented by a set
The next section describes how the magnetostrictive displace- of mechanical forces in the direction of the vector , there is
ment is found, and how this leads to the concept of always a set of forces perpendicular to to correct this differ-
magnetostriction forces, the latter being the direct equivalent of ence in Poisson modulus (Fig. 1). The above is valid for plane
thermal stresses (Fig. 1). stress. In a 2-D plane strain analysis, the thickness ( direction)
of the material has to remain constant and an additional tensile
III. MAGNETOSTRICTION FORCES stress needs to be applied in order to obtain . This ad-
For finite-element models, the magnetostrictive displacement justs the values (8) to
can be computed on an element-by-element basis. The mid-
point (center of gravity) of the finite-element is held fixed. The
magnetostrictive strain of the element is found using the ele-
ment’s flux density and the characteristic of the mate-
rial. If a set of characteristics are given, one is chosen (9)
for the appropriate value of tensile stress.
where is the mechanical Poisson modulus of the material and
A. Isotropic Magnetostriction .
For materials with isotropic magnetostriction (Fig. 2), the
B. Anisotropic Magnetostriction
local axis of the element are rotated in such a way that the
flux density vector coincides with the local axis. The strains Fig. 2 shows a typical magnetostriction characteristic for
and in the local frame are then given by anisotropic M330-50A steel (dashed lines) for rolling direction
and transverse direction. As an approximation of the anisotropic
behavior, the flux density vector is decomposed into a and
a component in the element’s local axis, arranged so
that the axis coincides with the rolling direction, and the
(8) axis with the transverse direction. The rolling direction curve
is then used with as input, and the perpendicular
where is the magnetostrictive strain in the direc- direction curve with as input, giving, for plane
tion of ( direction) and is the magnetostrictive strain stress
in the transverse and directions. Usually, magnetostriction
will leave the total volume and density unchanged [8], so that
. This volume invariance is equivalent to
a magnetostrictive “Poisson modulus” of 0.5, which is bigger
than the mechanical Poisson modulus of about 0.3. Therefore, (10)
DELAERE et al.: COMPARISON OF INDUCTION MACHINE STATOR VIBRATION SPECTRA 971

Depending on the actual anisotropic behavior of the material, a virtual work done by a set of external forces (where vector
more accurate strain description can be used, e.g., taking mag- potential remains constant)
netostrictive shear into account [9]. A similar correction as
in (9) can be made for the plane strain case. (16)

C. Magnetostrictive Displacement The magnetic forces (reluctance forces as well as Lorentz forces
Still working in the local axis, the strains are now [6]) are found by the virtual work term [10]
converted into nodal displacements con-
sidering the midpoint of the element as fixed (17)

(11) which is valid for linear and nonlinear magnetic systems. The
elastic forces as well as the magnetostriction forces are given by
the other virtual work term . First, we write the elastic
where indicates the element nodes with coordinates .
energy as the sum of all element contributions
D. Magnetostriction Forces (18)
The mechanical stiffness matrix for one element gives,
after multiplication with the magnetostrictive displacement then, using , the partial derivative be-
of the nodes, the nodal magnetostriction forces comes
(12)
(19)
Equation (12) has to be performed element by element (using
) and not for the whole mesh at once (using the global matrix (20)
). This is because the different displacements ,
, due to magnetostriction in the elements surrounding
(21)
one specific node, should not be summed. These displace-
ments should first be converted into magnetostriction since for constant . When the feedback of mag-
forces, and then the forces are summed to give the total force netostriction on the magnetic field is neglected, the magnetic
on this node. equation of the magnetomechanical system is just ,
When the magnetostriction forces for all elements have been where is the source term vector. The magnetomechanical
computed, they are summed to give the total magnetistriction system then becomes
force distribution

(13) (22)

where the second equation is obtained by substituting (17) and

Fig. 1(b) shows the resulting for a square block of material (21) into (16). The system (22) can be solved in a numerically
subject to a homogeneous field; all internal node forces cancel. weak coupled scheme, first solving the magnetic problem and
Once this distribution is known, the corresponding global de- then solving for the mechanical displacement.
formation of the entire structure due to magnetostriction, is
found using the global mechanical stiffness matrix V. MODAL DECOMPOSITION
(14) The vibration of the stator is governed by

Note that (13) should only be used to find from , while (23)
(14) should only be used to find from . Since the global
stiffness matrix was used to find , the influence of ex- where is the nodal displacement vector and is the
ternal boundary conditions has been taken into account, as well force distribution acting on the stator for a specific rotor posi-
as the effect of the shape of the body (e.g., ring-shaped stator). tion , . , and are the mechanical mass,
damping, and stiffness matrices. Neglecting damping
and using the modal decomposition with the modal
IV. MAGNETOMECHANICAL SYSTEM
matrix containing a selected set of stator mode shapes,
The total energy of the magnetomechanical system is the and the vector of generalized modal coordinates, (23) is trans-
sum of the elastic energy and the magnetic energy formed into [11]
(15) (24)

where is the magnetic stiffness matrix and is the -com- where is the mode’s eigenfrequency. The modes are calcu-
ponent of magnetic vector potential. The mechanical equation lated taking mass and stiffness of both the yoke iron and the
of the magnetomechanical system is found by considering the stator coil copper into account. For a given force pattern (in
972 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 38, NO. 2, MARCH 2002

modes are composed back into the actual stator displacement

and acceleration spectra using the modal composition .

VI. EXAMPLE: 45-kW INDUCTION MACHINE

Fig. 3 compares the stator acceleration spectra computed for
reluctance forces as well as for the two types of magnetostric-
tion (1) and (2), for the case of a 45-kW induction machine
under normal operation. Fig. 3(a) compares the stator accelera-
tion spectra induced by reluctance forces (dotted line) and mag-
netostriction type 2 (solid line), while Fig. 3(b) compares the
vibration spectrum induced by magnetostriction type 1 (dotted
line) and magnetostriction type 2 (solid line). It can be seen that
the vibrations (and, thu,s also the noise) due to magnetostriction
are considerably smaller than the effect due to reluctance forces,
(a) except for the 100–Hz force component, where they are of the
same order of magnitude. The overall difference between mag-
netostriction type I and II is small, and is only important for a
few specific modes. The full analysis required 15 hours of CPU
time on a HP-B1000 workstation.

VII. CONCLUSION
Using a thermal stress analogy, a set of magnetostriction
forces is computed that induces the same strain in the material
as magnetostriction does. Using the example of a 45-kW
induction machine, this magnetostriction force distribution
is compared to the reluctance force distribution with respect
to the resulting stator vibration spectrum for two typical
magnetostriction characteristics.
(b)
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