General Electric Company

Gould Inc.

Thomas M Jahns

Gerald Burt Kliman

Brian Lee Beifus

Charles Michael Stephens

Eric R Benedict

Roger Carlos Becerra

David M Erdman

Vijay K Stokes

Roger Neal Johnson

William R Archer

Mark A Brattoli

John L August, Jr

Wen Liang Soong

Harold Lown

Khan Mohamed Khan

Michael W Degner

William P Kornrumpf

Robert K Hollenbeck

Donald W Jones

Glen C Young

Arthur Vorwerk Radun

Eric J Wildi

Paul Michael Szczesny

Glen V Brynsvold

Austars R Schnore

Vytautas Janonis

A blower unit which, in one embodiment, includes an elongate main mounting member, a stator, a fan subassembly, and a blower housing, is described. In the one embodiment, the elongate main mounting member is the main structural member of the unit. The stator includes a stator core and stator windings, and the stator is secured to the main mounting member. The fan subassembly includes a rotor and a plurality of vanes. The rotor includes a substantially cylindrical iron ring and a magnetic portion having a substantially cylindrical shape. The magnetic portion is secured within the inner diameter of the iron ring and defines a rotor bore. The stator is located in the rotor bore and is concentric with respect to the rotor. The rotor is coupled to the plurality of vanes so that the vanes rotate with the rotor. The fan subassembly also includes bearing assemblies which are spring biased toward, and into rotatable engagement with, the elongate main mounting member. The fan assembly further includes a shroud for partially enclosing the plurality of vanes.

Integrated motor and blower apparatus

A single phase permanent magnet motor includes a rotor, a stator, and a quadrature axis winding positioned out-of-phase from a main winding of the stator for generating an output signal representative of rotor angular position. An integrator can be coupled to the quadrature axis winding for phase retarding the output signal, and a comparator can be coupled to the integrator for detecting zero crossings of the phase retarded output signal to provide a commutation signal. The quadrature axis winding can be positioned about ninety electrical degrees out-of-phase from the main winding of the stator, and the integrator can be adapted to phase retard the output signal by a number of degrees which decreases as a speed of the motor increases. At low speeds the phase retard is preferably at about ninety degrees so that the phase retarded signal becomes in-phase with the main stator winding back EMF voltage. The motor may further include a rectifier coupled to the quadrature axis winding for rectifying the output signal, and a lowpass filter for filtering the rectified output signal to provide a signal proportional to velocity. Also the single phase motor is commutated for maximum torque production.

Quadrature axis winding for sensorless rotor angular position control of

A blower unit includes an elongate main mounting member, a stator, a fan subassembly, and a blower housing. The elongate main mounting member is the main structural member of the unit. The stator includes a stator core and stator windings, and the stator is secured to the main mounting member. The fan subassembly includes a rotor and a plurality of vanes. The rotor includes a substantially cylindrical iron ring and a magnetic portion having a substantially cylindrical shape. The magnetic portion is secured within the inner diameter of the iron ring and defines a rotor bore. The stator is located in the rotor bore and is concentric with respect to the rotor. The rotor is coupled to the plurality of vanes so that the vanes rotate with the rotor. The fan subassembly also includes bearing assemblies which are spring biased towards, and into rotatable engagement with, the elongate main mounting member. The fan subassembly further includes a shroud for partially enclosing the plurality of vanes.

Integrated motor and blower apparatus having two back-to-back coupled

A motor system having a stationary assembly including a winding and a rotatable assembly in magnetic coupling relation to the stationary assembly. A power supply link having upper and lower rails supplied by a power supply provides power to the motor winding. The power supply link has power switches responsive to a motor control signal for selectively connecting the rails to the winding to energize the winding with a motor current whereby an electromagnetic field is produced for rotating the rotatable assembly. The power switches include a set of upper power switches and a set of lower power switches. Each of the power switches has a conducting state and a nonconducting state. The system includes a disable circuit for selectively generating a disable signal and a control circuit for generating the motor control signal to control the power switches. The control circuit is responsive to the disable signal for controlling the power switches so that the lower power switches become conducting and the upper power switches become nonconducting, or vice-versa, thereby de-energizing the winding to disable the motor. Other features are also disclosed including circuitry for commutating the motor in advance of zero crossings of the back electromotive force, correcting asymmetries in the commutation intervals and reversing the motor.

Single phase motor for laundering apparatus

A switched reluctance generator system, including a converter for coupling a dc voltage via a dc excitation bus (or excitation nodes) to a switched reluctance generator and thereby providing excitation thereto, has a separate generator bus for providing the output voltage of the switched reluctance generator. The generator bus is separate and distinct from the dc excitation bus such that the average current generated by the switched reluctance generator is substantially independent of the generator output voltage. As a result, the switched reluctance generator is capable of resuming generating operation after occurrence of an overload, without requiring a relatively large power source to supply the overload, clear the fault (e.g., via a fuse) and re-excite the generator.

Switched reluctance generator system with fault recovery capability

A switched reluctance motor drive or generator takes advantage of the characteristic independence of concentrated phase windings to optimize fault-tolerant operation. No 'dead zones' in motor torque production or generator voltage output are created by faulted phases. One embodiment prevents unbalanced magnetic pull on the rotor despite deactivation of a faulted phase by employing multiple pairs of opposed stator pole windings in each phase.

Fault-tolerant switched reluctance machine

A winding and method of winding for a submersible linear pump for pumping liquid sodium is disclosed. The pump includes a stator having a central cylindrical duct preferably vertically aligned. The central vertical duct is surrounded by a system of coils in slots. These slots are interleaved with magnetic flux conducting elements, these magnetic flux conducting elements forming a continuous magnetic field conduction path along the stator. The central duct has placed therein a cylindrical magnetic conducting core, this core having a cylindrical diameter less than the diameter of the cylindrical duct. The core once placed to the duct defines a cylindrical interstitial pumping volume of the pump. This cylindrical interstitial pumping volume preferably defines an inlet at the bottom of the pump, and an outlet at the top of the pump. Pump operation occurs by static windings in the outer stator sequentially conveying toroidal fields from the pump inlet at the bottom of the pump to the pump outlet at the top of the pump. The winding apparatus and method of winding disclosed uses multiple slots per pole per phase with parallel winding legs on each phase equal to or less than the number of slots per pole per phase. The slot sequence per pole per phase is chosen to equalize the variations in flux density of the pump sodium as it passes into the pump at the pump inlet with little or no flux and acquires magnetic flux in passage through the pump to the pump outlet.

Winding for linear pump

An AC polyphase motor drive includes a current-controlled inverter comprising a plurality of semiconductor devices made up of power switches, such as IGBTs, and diodes. Current sensors integral with respective ones of a first group of the semiconductor devices sense the current delivered to each of the motor phase windings and a controller compares the sensed currents to a set of command signals to control operation of a second group of the semiconductor devices.

Integrated current sensor configurations for AC motor drives

A method and apparatus for operating a current-controlled pulse width modulated inverter for driving a polyphase AC load includes using partial current feedback information, obtained from the inverter lower phase-leg switches and flyback diodes only, to regulate current flow in each phase of the load by synthesizing an analog feedback signal from the partial current feedback information.

Integrated current sensor torque control for ac motor drives

An electric drive system uses a multiphase alternating current motor and inverter to convert power from a battery source to provide propulsion. The phase sets defined by the motor stator winding are excited by a corresponding plurality of inverters. Time harmonic currents in the windings are effectively suppressed by providing the drive motor in a configuration having high leakage inductance in the stator winding. The windings are arranged in sets of multiples of three-phase windings. In the illustrated embodiment, the inverters are arranged to define three-phase inverters for exciting m sets, where m.gtoreq.2, of three-phase windings of the motor stator. The number of multiphase winding sets is determined in a manner that eliminates the need for paralleling of inverter switching devices.

Electric drive system

The operation of an interior permanent magnet synchronous motor is extended to the constant horsepower regime by causing the stator current vector to follow the voltage-limit ellipse in the counter-clockwise direction. The error between commanded stator current and actual stator current is determined to signal a saturation of the inverter and the commanded stator current is modified to reduce the error.

Flux-weakening regime operation of an interior permanent magnet

By using the on-state forward voltage drops of the power switches to measure phase currents, and by using diode logic to sense the voltage drops, it is possible for a single voltage comparator to perform the current regulation function for an entire power converter. Current regulation is obtained in drives using either overlapping or nonoverlapping current conduction for excitation of the motor phases. A thermistor compensates for offsets and for temperature sensitivity of the power switch voltage drops.

Current-sensing scheme for switched reluctance motor drives

A circuit for operating an electric discharge lamp comprises an inductor in series with the lamp, a capacitor in parallel with the lamp, and a transistorized inverter circuit connected in series with the inductor and the lamp. The operating frequency of the inverter increases with increasing load. A harmonic of the inverter output frequency is initially established at the resonant frequency of the inductor and capacitor to produce a high open circuit lamp starting voltage. Upon establishment of an electrical discharge in the lamp, the inverter frequency increases to provide efficient, stable lamp operation.

Growing community of inventors

Schenectady, NY, United States of America

Thomas M Jahns