Effect of Pulses Power Electronic Devices on the the Partial Discharge Occurrence in Electrical Machines using Finite Element Method Modeling

Partial Discharge is one of the main causes of premature aging of electrical machines insulations, which are using power electronic drives. An appropriate model can prepare a better recognition of influences of different parameters on partial discharge behavior. Partial discharge has been modeled with different kind of methods, but no one modeled this phenomena under pulses of power electronic devices. In this paper, modeling of partial discharge using Finite Element Method (FEM) in order to calculate electric field is presented. Accordingly, COMSOL MultiphysicsTM 3.5a software is used to calculate electric field with FEM which is connected simultaneously to MATLAB software to implement the proposed algorithm. The influence of different parameters such as, rise time of each surges, the high repetition rate of PWM pulses and the amount of overshoots of each pulses on behavior of partial discharge is examined.