Acoustic noise radiated by PWM-controlled induction machine drives

This paper investigates the acoustic noise radiated from two nominally identical induction motors when fed from sinusoidal, and asymmetric regular sampling subharmonic and space-vector pulsewidth modulation (PWM) converters. The theory for analyzing the noise spectrum is developed further to account for the interaction between the motor and the drive. It is shown that manufacturing tolerances can result in significant differences in the noise level emitted from nominally identical motors, and that mechanical resonances can result in extremely high noise emissions. Such resonances can be induced by stator and rotor slot air-gap field harmonics due to the fundamental component of current, and by the interaction between the airgap field harmonics produced by the fundamental and the PWM harmonic currents. The significance of the effect of PWM strategy on the noise is closely related to the mechanical resonance with vibration mode order zero, while the PWM strategy will be critical only if the dominant cause of the emitted noise is the interaction of the fundamental air-gap field and PWM harmonics.