Elements of electric drive systems

Electric drive systems concerned about controlling the speed of electric motors in steady state and dynamic
operations, taking into consideration the characteristics of mechanical loads and the behaviors of power
electronic converters.

In the not-so-distant past, designing a versatile drive system was a difficult task that required bulky, inefficient,
and expensive equipment like multimachine systems as shown in figure.

The dc motor was selected for applications requiring speed control because controlling the speeds of ac
machines was more difficult because it is fairly constant
The output voltage of the dc generator is adjusted by controlling its excitation current and adjusting the field
current of the generator controls the terminal voltage of the dc motor .hence; the speed of the dc motor is
controlled accordingly. For example, old elevators may still use this system today.

With modern solid-state power technology, motors can be used in more precise applications, such as position
control of robots and airplane actuation .hydraulic and pneumatic systems are now being replaced by electric
drives.

The drive systems have various forms:

1. Line shaft drives.

As shown in figure (1.2)

2.single-motor, single-load drives.

As shown (1.3)
3. Multimotor drives.
As shown in figure (1.4)
Basic components of an electric drive system:

A modern electric drive system has five main functional blocks as shown in figure (1.5):

Mechanical loads
Mechanical loads exhibit wide variations of speed torque characteristics.Load torque are generally
speed depend .

Converters
The main function of a converter is to transform the wave form of a power source to that required by an
electric motor in order to achieve the desired performance. it have four types as shown in figure (1.10)
Most converters provide adjustable voltage and current to control speed torque or power of the motor

Electric motors :

Electric motors exhibit wide various of speed torque characteristics which are shown in figure 1.9 .In
electric drive application ,electric motors should be selected to match the intended performance of the
load.