Winding resistance is one of the most important characteristics of electric motors, which we need to judge whether the motor is adequate. Resistance is measured using the four-point resistance measurement method. The diploma thesis focuses on the resistance measurement problems encountered at the company laboratory.
We tackled the tasks by presenting the most common measurements done in the laboratory and calibrating the laboratory device and the microohm-meter using reference resistors. With this, we checked the suitability of the devices for carrying out further tests and research.
Then we focused on the influence of winding heating due to the measuring current. If we want to measure the resistance of the winding, we have to pass some current through it. However, if this current is too high, unwanted heating of the winding may occur, causing incorrect measured values. We have found that this problem is more pronounced with higher resistances, since more power is wasted on the winding. We determined that resistances above 100 mΩ should be measured with a measuring current of 1 A. We also checked with thermocouples how much the motor stator heats up at different measuring currents.
We also checked how the offset voltage affects the measurements on two laboratory devices and compared the device with a measuring range of 10 V and 300 V. We noticed that a device with a higher measuring range has a much higher offset voltage and therefore, without suitable solutions, it is not adequate for lower resistances, since the offset voltage measured during device calibration may no longer be the same. We also implemented offset voltage compensation before each resistance measurement.
By removing the rotor, we wanted to find out if the change in inductance also changes the resistance. When reducing the inductance by a fifth, no significant difference in resistance was observed. We concluded that inductance has no significant effect on resistance with the values encountered in the laboratory.
Finally, we used the circuit simulator to check how contact resistances and wire resistances affect the measured resistance of motors with two windings. We noticed that contact resistances and wire resistances with a value of less than a few mΩ do not significantly affect the result. However, we have found that if two of the resistances are more than 5mΩ, we can quickly reach an error of 2%, which may not be noticed without a closer analysis.
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