Theory and Experiment for Electromagnetic Shaft Current in Rotating Machinery

Electrical damages to critical parts in rotating machinery have caused many machinery failures and hours of costly downtime. The problem of shaft currents generated in non-electrical machines has puzzled both users and manufacturers of these machines. The main solution for preventing electromagnetic type damage is to demagnetize all of the machinery parts, however this is costly and time consuming. Therefore a thorough investigation into the causes and physical characteristics of electromagnetic shaft currents is needed. In this paper, the self excitation theory was developed far a simple model, an axial flux Faraday disk machine surrounded by a long solenoid. Experimental tests were conducted to investigate the physical characteristics on an electromagnetic self excitation rig. The theory showed that the directions of both the shaft rotation and the coil turns should be identical if self excitation is to occur. From the tests, the electromagnetic type shaft current had both AC and DC components occurred at all vibration frequencies. This could point to a way to detect small instabilities or natural frequency locations by monitoring shaft currents.