Traction motor

Traditionally road vehicles (cars, buses, and trucks) have used diesel and petrol engines with a mechanical or hydraulic transmission system. In the latter part of the 20th century, vehicles with electrical transmission systems (powered by internal combustion engines, batteries, or fuel cells) began to be developed—one advantage of using electric machines is that specific types can regenerate energy (i.e. act as a regenerative brake)—providing deceleration as well as increasing overall efficiency by charging the battery pack.

Swiss Rhaetian Railway Ge 6/6 I Krokodil locomotive, with a single large traction motor above each bogie, with drive by coupling rods.

Traditionally, these were series-wound brushed DC motors, usually running on approximately 600 volts. The availability of high-powered semiconductors (thyristors and the IGBT) has now made practical the use of much simpler, higher-reliability AC induction motors known as asynchronous traction motors. Synchronous AC motors are also occasionally used, as in the French TGV.

Before the mid-20th century, a single large motor was often used to drive multiple driving wheels through connecting rods that were very similar to those used on steam locomotives. Examples are the Pennsylvania Railroad DD1, FF1 and L5 and the various Swiss Crocodiles. It is now standard practice to provide one traction motor driving each axle through a gear drive.

Nose-suspended DC traction motor for a Czech ČD class 182 locomotive

Usually, the traction motor is three-point suspended between the bogie frame and the driven axle; this is referred to as a "nose-suspended traction motor". The problem with such an arrangement is that a portion of the motor's weight is unsprung, increasing unwanted forces on the track. In the case of the famous Pennsylvania Railroad GG1, two frame-mounted motors drove each axle through a quill drive. The "Bi-Polar" electric locomotives built by General Electric for the Milwaukee Road had direct drive motors. The rotating shaft of the motor was also the axle for the wheels. In the case of French TGV power cars, a motor mounted to the power car's frame drives each axle; a "tripod" drive allows a small amount of flexibility in the drive train allowing the trucks bogies to pivot. By mounting the relatively heavy traction motor directly to the power car's frame, rather than to the bogie, better dynamics are obtained, allowing better high-speed operation.[2]

The DC motor was the mainstay of electric traction drives on electric and diesel-electric locomotives, street-cars/trams and diesel electric drilling rigs for many years. It consists of two parts, a rotating armature and fixed field windings surrounding the rotating armature mounted around a shaft. The fixed field windings consist of tightly wound coils of wire fitted inside the motor case. The armature is another set of coils wound round a central shaft and is connected to the field windings through "brushes" which are spring-loaded contacts pressing against an extension of the armature called the commutator. The commutator collects all the terminations of the armature coils and distributes them in a circular pattern to allow the correct sequence of current flow. When the armature and the field windings are connected in series, the whole motor is referred to as "series-wound". A series-wound DC motor has a low resistance field and armature circuit. For this reason, when voltage is applied to it, the current is high due to Ohm's law. The advantage of high current is that the magnetic fields inside the motor are strong, producing high torque (turning force), so it is ideal for starting a train. The disadvantage is that the current flowing into the motor has to be limited, otherwise the supply could be overloaded or the motor and its cabling could be damaged. At best, the torque would exceed the adhesion and the driving wheels would slip. Traditionally, resistors were used to limit the initial current.

As the DC motor starts to turn, interaction of the magnetic fields inside causes it to generate a voltage internally. This counter-electromotive force (CEMF) opposes the applied voltage and the current that flows is governed by the difference between the two. As the motor speeds up, the internally generated voltage rises, the resultant EMF falls, less current passes through the motor and the torque drops. The motor naturally stops accelerating when the drag of the train matches the torque produced by the motors. To continue accelerating the train, series resistors are switched out step by step, each step increasing the effective voltage and thus the current and torque for a little bit longer until the motor catches up. This can be heard and felt in older DC trains as a series of clunks under the floor, each accompanied by a jerk of acceleration as the torque suddenly increases in response to the new surge of current. When no resistors are left in the circuit, full line voltage is being applied directly to the motor. The train's speed remains constant at the point where the torque of the motor, governed by the effective voltage, equals the drag - sometimes referred to as balancing speed. If the train starts to climb an incline, the speed decreases because drag is greater than torque and the reduction in speed causes the CEMF to fall and thus the effective voltage to rise - until the current through the motor produces enough torque to match the new drag. The use of series resistance was wasteful because a lot of energy was lost as heat. To reduce these losses, electric locomotives and trains (before the advent of power electronics) were normally equipped for series-parallel control as well.

Locomotives that operated from AC power sources (using universal motors as traction motors) could also take advantage of tap changers on their transformers to vary the voltage applied to the traction motors without the losses inherent in resistors. The Pennsylvania Railroad class GG1 was an example of such a locomotive.

If the train starts to descend a grade, the speed increases because the (reduced) drag is less than the torque. With increased speed, the internally generated back-EMF voltage rises, reducing the torque until the torque again balances the drag. Because the field current is reduced by the back-EMF in a series wound motor, there is no speed at which the back-EMF will exceed the supply voltage, and therefore a single series wound DC traction motor alone cannot provide dynamic or regenerative braking.

There are, however various schemes applied to provide a retarding force using the traction motors. The energy generated may be returned to the supply (regenerative braking), or dissipated by on board resistors (dynamic braking). Such a system can bring the load to a low speed, requiring relatively little friction braking to bring the load to a full stop.

On an electric train, the train driver or motorman originally had to control the cutting out of resistance manually, but by 1914, automatic acceleration was being used. This was achieved by an accelerating relay (often called a "notching relay") in the motor circuit which monitored the fall of current as each step of resistance was cut out. All the driver had to do was select low, medium or full speed (called "series", "parallel" and "shunt" from the way the motors were connected in the resistance circuit) and the automatic equipment would do the rest.