AN INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF DYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF VENTILATION FAN OF A TRACTION MOTOR

Ventilation fan constitutes one of the critical components of traction motor. As the weight of the component is to be kept minimum, it is made up of aluminium alloy casting. But it has to withstand high centrifugal acceleration and shock loads. Any failure of the fan shall lead to consequential damages to the motor resulting in long outages and huge expenditure. This paper presents an integrated approach with an improved quality plan to meet the operational criteria of the fan. It consists of a review of all the aspects like design analysis, material composition, casting process and control, heat treatment, post casting operations, aerodynamic and mechanical performance testing in a specially built test rig followed by field trials, which resulted in achieving a longer and trouble free performance.