Calculation of Bearing Currents

With the advance of voltage source PWM converters assembled with GTOs and IGBTs, motor bearing damages happen more and more often. For converter-fed machines, fast switching semiconductors as well as increasing switching frequencies lead to capacitively coupled bearing voltages which can provoke different types of bearing currents. Our aim is to develop a model which is able to simulate the complete system consisting of the converter, the connection to the motor and the motor itself, in order to be able to precalculate the bearing currents and predict the bearing life.