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Owing partly to tradition, the shafts of electric motors are often larger than those of the equipment they drive. Engineers were very conservative a century ago when electric motors first came into widespread industrial use, so they typically designed in a sizable margin of error. Today's engineers haven't changed much in this respect. For example, standard NEMA frame dimensions, which have been revised only once since 1950, still specify much larger shaft sizes than commonly accepted principles of mechanical engineering would require.
Most motor shafts are keyed, which increases the shear stress exerted on the shaft. Considering this, motor shaft designs typically use no more than 75 percent of the maximum recommended stress for a non-keyed shaft, which is also why electric motor shafts are often larger than the pump shafts they drive.
Example 1
Consider a 200-hp (150-kW), 1,800-rpm motor. For a direct-couple application, the standard frame size is 445TS, with a (keyed) shaft diameter of 2.375-in (60-mm). Using Equation [1], the minimum shaft size would be:
Since the calculated shaft diameter for a 200-hp motor is designed to withstand twice the rated torque, the shaft diameter of 2.371-in is at the absolute minimum for the 400-hp rating.
A rule of thumb with this method is that the shaft must be large enough that it will not deflect more than 1 degree in a length of 20 times its diameter. To calculate the minimum shaft size to meet this specification, use the following equation:
Example 2
For the 200-hp (150-kW), 1,800-rpm motor from Example 1, the minimum shaft size to limit torsional deflection would be: