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Electrical stress on electrical steel coatings

Article  in  Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials · January 2003

DOI: 10.1016/S0304-8853(02)00839-9

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 Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 254–255 (2003) 340–342

Electrical stress on electrical steel coatings

G. Loisosa, A.J. Mosesa,*, P. Beckleyb
a
Wolfson Centre for Magnetics Technology, Cardiff University, P.O. Box 925, New Port Road, CF24 0YF Cardiff, UK
b
Church Farm House, Bettws Hill, Newport NP20 7AD, UK

Abstract

This paper reports on investigations of the electrical stress/interlaminar voltages on electrical steel coatings and
highlights some misconceptions by simulating possible insulation failures in a magnetic core. It concludes by showing
that insulation breakdown due to electrical discharge between laminations is not the main cause of short circuits in a
magnetic core and questions the significance of insulation resistance consequently, as a selection criterion of electrical
steel coatings in the machine building process.
r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Electrical steels; Electrical steel coatings; Insulation failure

1. Introduction possibly assist machine designers and manufacturers in

Inorganic or organic based insulating coatings have
been developed for application to NO and GO electrical
steels with a wide range of properties required to satisfy
the needs of machine builders. Important coating
properties include insulation resistance, punchability
and corrosion resistance, weldability, heat resistance,
chemical resistance, burn out characteristics, resistance
to compression, coating thickness, surface roughness
and scratch resistance [1]. Serious problems from
insulation failure or burrs tend to arise only in large
machines where back iron width is greater than 200 mm.
International standards describe measurement meth-
ods for the assessment of coating insulation properties
[2]. The effect of the magnitude of the test voltage on the
insulation resistance obtained is unclear. Users of
electrical steel often wish to see high test voltages
specified, EN 10282:2001 uses 0.5 V (mode A) and 0.25 V
(mode B), yet if these are too high compared with the in-
service interlaminar emfs present in practice, the test
method might indicate unrealistic insulation needs [3].
The aim of this paper is to highlight the electrical
stress problem, try to clarify some misconceptions and
*Corresponding author. Fax: +2920-876729.
E-mail address: mosesaj@cf.ac.uk (A.J. Moses).
their ‘‘weighting’’ of the significance of insulation
resistance/thickness of coating.
2. Experiment
Sheets of non-oriented electrical steel, non-coated
(300 mm
100 mm
0.5 mm) were magnetised at 50 Hz
in their longitudinal direction either singly, in pairs or in
groups of three. Insulation paper interleaves, 0.1 mm
thick, were used to simulate ideal conditions of coating
(no electrical contact). Fig. 1 indicates possible cases of
insulation failure, which might occur in magnetic cores
due to the forming and assembly of laminations
(stamping, welding, etc.) in the electrical machine
manufacturing process. Case 1 is the simplified situation
of a pair of laminations short circuited longitudinally
along one edge. Other configurations useful for the
understanding of electrical stress between laminations
are represented in cases 2–4. The reference flux density
of 0.5 T was calculated from the rectified average
voltage, induced in a 10-turn search coil wound around
the total width of the samples and it was kept constant
in all the cases. A feedback circuit was used to keep the
form factor of the induced emf in the reference search
coil to 1.1171%. The output voltages, V1 2V4 ; were

0304-8853/03/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 3 0 4 - 8 8 5 3 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 8 3 9 - 9
 G. Loisos et al. / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 254–255 (2003) 340–342
100mm
B B
V1
Electrical steel Paper
sheet interleave
Case 1
B 100mm
V3
Case 3
Fig. 1. Four possible cases of insulation failure between laminations.
measured across sharp-ended probes located at the
edges of the laminations shown in Fig. 1, using a digital
AC average voltmeter.
The 0.5 T reference flux density was chosen for
convenience to give 50 mV in the search coil when one
lamination was magnetised, 100mV in the case of two
and 150 mV in the case where a group of three
laminations was magnetised. This is equivalent to an
induced voltage of 5 mV in a one-turn search coil wound
around the width of each lamination.
Consider a lamination of width (w) and thickness (t)
magnetised along its longitudinal direction (perpendi-
cular to the plane of the paper) and enwrapped by a
search coil whose induced voltage is eout : Fig. 2
illustrates an electrical analogue of the lamination.
Assuming homogeneous material, Faraday’s Law can
be expressed as
I Z ~
E ~ ¼  qB  dS
~  dL ~: ð1Þ
S qt
C
If Eq. (1) is further analysed and assuming flux leakage
negligible then we can write
2iðRw þ Rt Þ ¼ eout ;
where Rw and Rt are the ohmic resistance of the material
along the width and the thickness of the lamination,
respectively, and i is the total eddy current circulating in
the lamination. Fig. 3 shows the electrical analogues for
cases 1–4, respectively. Table 1 gives the results of
measurements carried out in each case and the estimated
output voltages from the models.
The voltage drop along one width and one thickness
of the sheet is half the total voltage eout in Eq. (2). It is
difficult to know with certainty the voltage drop, {iRw }
only along the width or along the thickness {iRt } of
the sheet. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that the
voltage drop along the width will be close to 2.5 mV and
341
100mm
V2
s/c
Case 2
B 100mm
V4
Case 4
B w
search coil eddy current path
eout
t
Rw Rt Rw Rt
~
eout
Fig. 2. Electrical analogue of a magnetised electrical steel sheet.
the voltage drop along the thickness will be very small
since the width to thickness (w=t) ratio is 200/1. In case
4, the two lower laminations are short circuited at both
ends and behave as one lamination of double thickness
(300 mm
100 mm
1.0 mm). The induced voltage, eout ;
in this ‘‘effective’’ lamination will be 10 mV and
i0 ðRw þ R0t Þ ¼ 5:0 mV where R0t ¼ 2Rt :
ð2Þ The small differences between measured and calcu-
lated voltages are attributed to the difficulty in achieving
perfect electrical contact at the short-circuited end and
also that the measuring probes were not placed exactly
at the edge of the sheet.
In case 1, where two laminations are short circuited at
one end, the amount of electrical stress applied to the
insulation between the laminations at the other end is
approximately equal to the voltage induced in a 1-turn
search coil wound around one lamination. The location
of short circuits in case 3 does not change the amount
of electrical stress and the insulation between the
laminations still has to withstand the same electrical
stress as in case 1. Case 4 shows that the electrical stress
is proportional to the number of short-circuited
342 G. Loisos et al. / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 254–255 (2003) 340–342

V1 V2

Rw Rt Rw Rt Rw Rt Rw Rt Rw Rt Rw R t Rw Rt R w R t R w Rt Rw Rt

eout ~ eout ~ e out ~ e out ~ e out ~

Case 1 Case 2

V3 V4

Rw Rt R w Rt Rw Rt Rw R t R w Rt Rw R t Rw Rt Rw Rt Rw R’t Rw R’t

~
eout eout ~ ~ eout ~ e’out
~
eout
Case 3 Case 4

Fig. 3. Electrical analogues representing the four cases of insulation failure under study.

Table 1
Experimental results and model estimations

Measured voltage (mV) Estimated voltages from models (mV)

Case 1 V1 ¼ 5:270:1 iðRw þ Rt Þ þ iðRw þ Rt Þ ¼ 2:5 þ 2:5 ¼ 5:0

Case 2 V2 ¼ 9:870:1 3 ½iðRw þ Rt Þ þ iRw ¼ 3 2:5 þ iRw D10:0 (minus)
Case 3 V3 ¼ 5:270:1 2 ½iðRw þ Rt Þ þ iRt ¼ 2 2:5 þ iRt D5:0 (plus)
Case 4 V4 ¼ 7:570:1 iðRw þ Rt Þ þ i0 ðRw þ R0t Þ ¼ 2:5 þ 5:0D7:5

laminations (Eq. (3)) 3. Conclusion

eout
V¼ ðN þ 1Þ; ð3Þ
2 In general, interlaminar eddy currents mainly arise
where V is the electrical stress (Volts) and N the number
of laminations short circuited at both ends. The
magnitude of the output voltage V2 in case 2 can be
understood from the electrical analogy or by considering
the theory of the modified probe technique [4] for the
middle lamination. Nevertheless, case 2 does not impose
any additional electrical stress to the coatings and it is
the same as case 1 from an electrical stress viewpoint.
In large electrical machines, where electrical stress and
insulation breakdown can be a potential problem, the
induced voltage in a critical area can be of the order of
50–70 mV. Typical coating thickness can be 1–5 mm and
its dielectric strength is of the order of 10–20 V/mm so
the electrical stress is far smaller than typical breakdown
voltage of a coating. Indirectly, this confirms the
importance of burrs as demonstrated experimentally
and theoretically previously [5] and demonstrates that
the role of coating on burr formation is more important
than its surface insulation properties.
from the creation of burrs during manufacture, which
can penetrate the thin coating layer rather than electrical
discharge between coatings. Therefore, electrical steel
manufacturers could direct their efforts to satisfy the
need for thin coatings not producing burrs rather than
coatings with enhanced conventional electrical proper-
ties.
References
[1] M. Lindenmo, et al., J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 215–216
(2000) 79.
[2] BS EN 10282:2001.
[3] P. Beckley, et al., IEE Proc. Power Appl. 145 (5) (1998)
409.
[4] G. Loisos, A.J. Moses, Eighth Joint MMM-Intermag
Conference, San Antonio, 2001.
[5] A.J. Moses, M. Aimoniotis, Phys. Scr. 40 (1989) 391.

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