2016

International Symposium on Power Electronics,

Electrical Drives, Automation and Motion

Study of the harmonics of current and voltage for a

synchronous generator in the context of railway
constraints
Petropol Serb Gabriela Dana Petropol Serb Ion
Faculty of Electric Engineering Quality Department
University of Craiova S.C. RELOC S.A
Craiova, Romania Craiova, Romania
gpetropol@em.ucv.ro ipetropol@yahoo.com

Abstract—The aim of this paper is to study issues related to synchronous generator, followed by rectifier, to replace the
the design of an experimental situation and a work procedure, to DC generator in modern thermoelectric transmissions. At
analyze the harmonics of voltages and currents for a synchronous equivalent weights, alternator assembly - synchronous
generator. As a theoretical subject of this experiment, the generator provides more power than a DC generator. Also, due
starting point is to simulate the behavior of the synchronous to lack collector decreases maintenance costs. The sensitivity
generator used in a railway diesel electrical transmission. The of the DC generator, because of the presence of collector,
method used to realize this experimental situation is that can’t be eliminated by precautions in the phase of designing,
appropriate for the designing of a procedure which could be used for the reason that, during operation, the oil vapors, emanated
in a laboratory of research. The stages of this method are:
by the diesel engine, are deposited on the collector,
problem formulation, affirmation of the hypothesis, study of the
theoretical background, designing the experiment, collecting the
influencing the switching. Therefore the solution with
data, analyzing the data, and testing of the hypothesis. The synchronous generator is superior.
impact of this experimental situation could be positive both for
understanding the problems of the thermoelectric transmission
and for understanding how to use the harmonics analysis in an
experimental situation. The results of this study could be useful
to design a research scenario to optimize the design of the
synchronous generator in concordance with the improvement of
the quality of power, which is an actual request.

Keywords—c synchronous generator; thermoelectric traction

system; designing protocol; armonic analysis, power quality

I. INTRODUCTION

A. State diagram of the thermoelectric transmission with

diesel engine
A short review of the literature, [2], [3], [4], [6],
underlined the constraints imposed to a thermoelectric
transmission with synchronous generator and diesel electric
engine: 1 - to allow the starting of the locomotive with the
diesel engine started (clutching the motor); 2 – to make a
reverse torque variation with speed, following a hyperbolic
characteristic; 3- to carry out continuous and automatic speed
variation, depending on the resisting torque; 4 – to allow
adjusting the speed limits both as economically and as wide as
the tonnage of the train and line profile; 5- to have a
lightweight, easy execution and the lowest possible price; 6- to
have a high efficiency to use as little power engine and do not
have significant energy loss; 7- to enable remote control, easy
to handle, allowing multiple command etc.. With these
considerations is defined the state diagram of the
thermoelectric transmission with diesel electric engine (figure
1). This diagram is the point of start to argue the use of the
Fig. 1. State diagram of the thermoelectric transmission with diesel engine
It must be underlined that the synchronous generator has
certain disadvantages, the most important being: 1- requires a
startup item separately because it can’t be used as a starter
group; 2- at powers equal to those of DC generator,
synchronous generator power requires about 5 times higher
excitation.
Analyzing the upper state diagram could be noted that the
quality of the power system is very important in system
operation. So, the hypothesis of work is: ‘How could be
analyzed the degree of impact of the harmonic distortion and

978-1-5090-2067-6/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

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how susceptible could be the equipment to the harmonic the chosen components of the test bench (figure 4) were: 1 -
distortion?’ DC machine that can operate in controlled torque, power or
speed to be used to drive electric car diesel engine modeling
B. Synchronous generator behaviour in a thermoelectric physical; 2- salient pole synchronous machine as a physical
transmission with diesel engine model of working machine used to simulate the traction
synchronous generator. Synchronous generator, connected to
From the literature [8], [10] it is known that, for a
the axle with this machine, will charge through a converter on
synchronous generator connected to a rectifier device, in time,
an inductive load. Because, in the context of real
variation curves of currents and voltages do not follow
thermoelectric chain, it is imposed that the power required by
sinusoidal waveforms. The idea of this experimental situation
the generator to be as constant regardless of speed or torque
is coming from this observation. The problem is to collect the
required, the characteristic of the synchronous generator must
data to describe the variation of voltage and currents in
have a hyperbolic variation (figure 3).
different situations of work of a synchronous generator which
simulate the operation of a railway traction generator. The
results must be used to argue an optimal design for a
synchronous generator [10]. The solution of this imposed
problem is giving by designing an experimental protocol. The
objectives of this designing protocol are: 1 - states the
hypothesis; 2 - develop an experimental design to test this
hypothesis; 3 - convert the actual design into an actual
experiment; 4 - collect and analyze data; 5 - test the
hypothesis. For this part, the diagram of designing the protocol
is shown in figure 2.
Fig. 3. External ideal characteristic of a three phase traction synchronous
generator

It is considered that this variation is satisfactory when the

deviation from constant power level of the diesel engine does
not exceed 3% across the range of locomotive speed [4]. To
monitoring the synchronous machine behavior during its
operation as generator, in the specified conditions, the
proposed driving chain required: 3- a continuous redressed
source (to supply the excitation circuit of synchronous
generator); 4- an inductive variable load; 5- a redresser for
supplying the load circuit. As a synthesis, the test bench
consists of a: loading platform; data acquisition and
processing system (figure 4).

Fig. 2. Diagram of designing the protocol

Fig. 4. Test bench

II. EXPERIMENTAL SITUATION
A. Test bench designing
To realize the test bench in the laboratory, the first step is
to search those electrical machines which allows us to obtain
the wanted characteristics to simulate the traction chain. After
a study of the technical characteristics of electric machines,
The experimental data are initially process in LabView.
Then, the harmonic analysis could be developed in Excel or
Matlab.
B. Experimental situations
An experimental situation is the unload operation.

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U 0 = f ( I e )| I s = 0 , n = nn = ct (1)
The parameters: field current Ie, load current Il and
rectified current Isr, line voltage Ul, phase voltage Uf and the
rectified voltage Ur, are acquired and processed in LabView.
The experiment was made in two situations: with LC filtering
in the field circuit and without LC filtering in different cases:
U 0 = f ( I e )| I l = 0 , n = 1300 rpm = ct ; (2)
U 0 = f ( I e )| I l = 0 , n = 1400 rpm = ct ; (3)
U 0 = f ( I e )| I l = 0 , n = 1500 rpm = ct ; (4)
U 0 = f ( I e ) | I l = 0 , n = 1600 rpm = ct . (5)
In figure 5 is shown the unload behavior of the
synchronous generator.
b rectified current Isr, line voltage Ul, phase voltage Uf and the
Fig. 5. Unload curves: a- Currents variation, b- Voltages variation
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Other experimental situation is to consider the operation in
load and to observe the variation of current and voltage of the
synchronous generator.
First, the generator works on the internal characteristics at
rated load:
U = f ( I e )| I l = I N = ct , n = nn = ct , cos ϕ = ct . (6)
The parameters: field current Ie, load current Il and
rectified current Isr, line voltage Ul, phase voltage Uf and the
rectified voltage Ur, are acquired (figure 6) and processed in
LabView.
Fig. 6. The load curves: a- Currents variation, b- voltages variation
Second, the generator works on the internal characteristics
at lower load:
U = f ( I e )| I l = I N = ct , n = nn = ct , cos ϕ = ct . (7)
The parameters: field current Ie, load current Il and
rectified voltage Ur, are acquired (figure 7) and processed in
LabView.
 b
Fig. 8. The load curves: a- Currents variation, b- voltages variation

III. ANALYZING THE WAVEFORMS OF VOLTAGES AND CURRENTS

AT THE SYNCHRONOUS GENERATOR

b
Fig. 7. The load curves: a- Currents variation, b- voltages variation
Following this reasoning could be imagined a lot of
experimental situations (figure 8) which could be source for
the harmonic analysis.
A. Harmonics problem
Nowadays, a growing power quality concern is the
harmonics distortions. The ideal quality of power supply is
characterized by electric power energy with perfect sinusoidal
wave form. The presence of harmonics have distorted the
waveform shape of current and voltage, increase the current
level and change the power factor supply.
Generally, harmonics distortions are caused by the non-
linearity of loads. The loads that caused harmonics are: most
all electronic equipment (computers, modern industrial
machines), variables frequency drives, some uninterruptible
power supplies and any equipment using switch mode power
supply. These harmonics currents caused overheating and
overloading to transformers, motors, motors control center,
power correction capacitors and solid state equipments.
Harmonic currents also cause high frequency electrical noise.
This can induced large voltage spikes in the power system
ground which can cause damages to sensitive electronic
equipment (circuit’s boards, computers, programmable logic
controllers, etc.).
In practice, there are three ways to approach and eliminate
problems caused by harmonics. The first option is to size
equipment to withstand the large harmonic neutral currents.
The second is to use Harmonic Mitigating Transformers and
the third is to install harmonic filters that trap and eliminate
harmonics.

B. Harmonics analysis
In our case, the harmonics of the synchronous generator
were acquired using LabView diagram exemplified in figure
9, exported and calculated in Excel. Some results are shown in
figures 10,11, 12, 13.
a

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Fig. 9. LabView diagram: Currents and voltages variation; harmonic analyze
b
Fig. 10. Harmonics analyzis for: a- phase voltage; b- line voltage at noload
The synthesis of this calculus is shown in table 1 for no operation of synchronous generator
load operation and the spectral analysis for phase and line
voltage is shown in figure 7.
In figure 8 is shown the spectral analysis for the rectified
voltage. For the load operation of the synchronous generator,
the synthesis of calculus for the spectral harmonics analyze is
shown in table II and the spectral analysis for phase and line
voltage is shown in figure 9.

TABLE I. TABLE 1. HARMONICS VALUES AT UNLOAD OPERATION

Rank Uf Ul Ur Ie
[V] [V] [V] [A]
Continue 705,67 0,63
Harmonic 1 407,29 742,24 40,3 0,01
Harmonic 3 4,19 2,44 5,11 0
Fig. 11. Harmonics analyzis for the rectified voltage at noload operation of
Harmonic 5 1,31 0,54 1,55 0
synchronous generator
Harmonic 7 0,51 0,99 0,84 0
Harmonic 9 4,7 0,61 0,59 0
TABLE II. HARMONICS VALUES AT LOAD OPERATION
Harmonic 11 0,8 1,21 0,35 0
Harmonic 13 0,08 0,21 0,24 0 Rank Uf Ul If Us Ie
[V] [V] (l) [V]
Harmonic 15 0,08 0,09 0,17 0 [A]
Harmonic 17 0,17 0,17 0,13 0 Continue 512,45 0,63

Harmonic 19 0,35 0,56 0,09 0 Harmonic 1 310,05 567,02 3,12 42,49 0,05
Harmonic 3 42,16 1,95 0 3,95 0
Harmonic 5 61,31 112,79 0,46 1,41 0
Harmonic 7 21,93 39,02 0,19 0,65 0
Harmonic 9 1,82 0,76 0 0,37 0
Harmonic 11 10,68 19,92 0,05 0,27 0
Harmonic 13 4,28 7,02 0,02 0,17 0
Harmonic 15 1,47 0,54 0 0,11 0
Harmonic 17 7,18 13,46 0,02 0,09 0
Harmonic 19 5,48 9,59 0,02 0,07 0

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 appeared in the operation of the synchronous generator, are
following the theoretical aspects as well as in the literature.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
The goals of this paper can be summarized as followed: 1.
Highlight a trans-disciplinary approach of a theoretical study;
2- Highlight the purpose of a harmonic analyze study; 3-
Provide a description of the procedure required to perform
harmonic study.
The operational regime of the synchronous generator could
a be described as a compound regime realized by a synchronous
regime, generated by the fundamental harmonic and a
harmonics regime.
There are two major categories of harmonics effects on
equipment: heating effects in power handling equipments, that
most often reduce the equipment’s operating life; and
disruption of operation that includes electronically controlled
equipment.
When the synchronous generator is followed by a rectifier
his operation is influenced by supplementary losses both in
damping winding as in the stator winding. This losses are
caused by the currents of pulsation 6k1 and (6k ± 1)1.
The above observations are important for the designing of
the synchronous generator. If the load of the generator is a
b rectifier and a motor of wavy current (frequently meet in
practice), then must been considered that the regime is
strongly deformed. For the thermal transmission with diesel
engine, the synchronous generator must have a short length
and a large diameter. If this is not possible could be placed a
fly wheel on the ax to increase the inertia. The damping
winding must be powerful to prevent the permeation of the
superior harmonics.

References
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[4] R. Ingale, - Harmonic Analysis Using FFT and STFT, International
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