Magnetically Controlled Saturable Reactor Core Vibration under Practical Working Conditions

In order to seek new vibration reduction method for magnetically controlled saturable reactors (MCSRs), this paper studies the stress characteristic which is the inherent reason of vibration and noise. Under the practical working condition, dc and ac excitations make iron cores work in a magnetic saturation state. Meanwhile, the stress in reactor cores always exists and influences on magnetic properties of the core material. Because the core material shows different magnetization and magnetostrictive properties under dc bias and stress, a database of magnetization and magnetostrictive curves of silicon steel under different tensile stresses with different dc bias excitations is tested. Based on the measured constitutive relations, an electromagneto-mechanical two-way coupled numerical model for MCSRs is presented. Vibrations considering magnetostrictive effect, electromagnetic force effect, and the combination of them are calculated to compare the influence of the two forces on MCSR vibration. From the computation results, it can be seen that the total vibration stress is not a simple superposition of electromagnetic stress and magnetostrictive stress. Finally, vibration stress of an MCSR prototype under working conditions is tested to prove the validity of the proposed model.