Salient pole alternators and Blondel's Two Reaction Theory

Salient pole alternators and Blondel's Two Reaction Theory

The details of synchronous generators developed so far is applicable to only round rotor or non-salient pole alternators. In such machines the air gap is uniform throughout and hence the effect of mmf will be same whether it acts along the pole axis or the inter polar axis. Hence reactance of the stator is same throughout and hence it is called synchronous reactance. But in case salient pole machines the air gap is non uniform and it is smaller along pole axis and is larger along the inter polar axis. These axes are called direct axis or d-axis and quadrature axis or q-axis. Hence the effect of mmf when acting along direct axis will be different than that when it is acting along quadrature axis. Hence the reactance of the stator cannot be same when the mmf is acting along d - axis and q- axis. As the length of the air gap is small along direct axis reluctance of the magnetic circuit is less and the air gap along the q - axis is larger and hence the along the quadrature axis will be comparatively higher. Hence along d-axis more flux is produced than q-axis. Therefore the reactance due to armature

reaction will be different along d-axis and q-axis. These reactances are,

Xad = direct axis reactance; Xaq = quadrature axis reactance

Hence the effect of armature reaction in the case of a salient pole synchronous machine can be taken as two components - one acting along the direct axis (coinciding with the main field pole axis) and the other acting along the quadrature axis (inter-polar region or magnetic neutral axis) and as such the mmf components of armature-reaction in a salient-pole machine cannot be considered as acting on the same magnetic circuit. Hence the effect of the armature reaction cannot be taken into account by considering only the synchronous reactance, in the case of a salient pole synchronous machine.

In fact, the direct-axis component Fad acts over a magnetic circuit identical with that of the main field system and produces a comparable effect while the quadrature-axis component Faq acts along the interpolar axis, resulting in an altogether smaller effect and, in addition, a flux distribution totally different from that of Fad or the main field m.m.f. This explains why the application of cylindrical-rotor theory to salient-pole machines for predicting the performance gives results not conforming to the performance obtained from an actual test.