Estimation of the equivalent circuit parameters of induction motors by laboratory test

The determination of equivalent circuit parameters for AC induction motors represents an important task in an electrical machine laboratory. Frequently used open-circuit and short current tests answer these requirements. However, the results have a low accuracy. This becomes especially obvious when the equivalent circuit is applied for the motor current and power prediction. The main obstacles in this circumstance lie in the difficulty of providing a pristine open-circuit test, the lack of which causes errors in parameter estimation. A much more accurate approach can be carried out with a test including several output points with measurements of the motor torque, velocity, current, and power magnitudes. Nevertheless, a relatively simple and accurate method to ensure determining parameters for such tests does not exist. This article tries to provide such a method by an approach based on Kloss’s simplified equation and the Thevenin theorem. The significant novelty of the method is the specially selected synergetic interaction between the analytical and numerical approaches, which give a relatively simple algorithm with a good accuracy and a convergence of the parameters’ estimation.