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investigating a lug failure and subsequent motor trip? 8

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electricpete

Electrical
May 4, 2001
16,774
Motor Nameplate data – 3500hp, 13.2kv 324rpm, 60hz, vertical squirrel cage induction motor. FLA = 153A. LRC = 989 at full current.

Motor Protection
CT ratio is 40:1
Instantaneous trip, High dropout trip and Time Overcurrent functions provided by IAC66M3A relay as follows:
Instantaneous trip 50A CT secondary (2000A primary)
High dropout trip – 30A CT secondary (1200A primary). Only trips if current remains above this level after 0.1 seconds.
Time overcurrent trip – 5A CT secondary (200A primary), Time Dial setting 2
Time overcurrent alarm (B-phase only) – 5A CT secondary (200A primary), Time Dial setting 1.5
Note that this relay is described at Negative sequence current trip (46 device) – GE 12KJC51E2A – set at slope=125%, TD=4
Ground overcurrent alarm – IAC77A relay fed from window type CT enclosing all three phases.

Time vs current curves for motor protection and starting are shown in slide 1 of the following powerpoint



History – motor was rewound in 2000. T-leads were 2AWG. 1/0 lug was crimped on using hydraulic crimping tool. As far as I know this within the lug manufacturer’s recommendations. All testing including surge testing and resistance testing was sat and balanced (we have the results).

Motor operated with no problem from 2000 until Fall 2005 (started and stopped approximately 20 times)

Upon starting motor in Oct 2005 following a system maintenance period (no motor work done, space heaters were energized), the motor tripped 2.5 seconds after start.

The following relays were tripped: 51G, A-phase HDO. No other alarms or flags were received.
The term box was inspected. Phases are ordered A, B, C from left to right. The rectangular plate is where the T-leads exit the motor in the following order (L to R): 5,1,2,6,4,3. Inspection of the term box showed evidence of slight surface tracking at where an insulating tie was used to position the unshielded cables in the vicinity of T5 (B-phase neutral), T1 (A-phase line), and the B-phase coupling capacitor jumper (slides 2,3). Further inspection of these points, including removal of the insulating tie, showed only a black residue, but no apparent insulation damage. Visual inspection did not show any apparent insulation damage at other locations including the C-phase. There is a single pock-mark on the back of the panel which would either be an arc strike mark or a copper bead.

The Raychem tape insulation was removed which revealed that T-3 (C-phase line lead) lug barrel was melted away. (SLIDES 4,5,6). The other T-lead lugs were inspected. On T2 lug there were 2 or 3 strands that appeared to be broken. Otherwise everything looked good.

The T1,T2,T3 lugs were replaced (not T4,T5,T6), residue removed, motor reterminated and re-taped. Passed PI, megger (5,000 megaohms plus), bridge test, and dc step voltage test to 24kvdc (I know that’s a little low) with no nonlinearities.

Upon starting the motor, further anomalies were noted which were eventually traced to the pump. Current went from LRC to 140A (normal), then back up to 190, 140, 190, 140 over the course of several minutes. Unusual noises were heard. Inspection of the pump showed the impeller had rubbed against the bowl due to loosening of anti-rotation pins outisde the bowl.

So now I am trying to make sense of all of this:
1 – Why did the A phase high dropout relay trip upon open-circuit of the C-phase lug? It seems to me that what initially looked like tracking at the A/B phase locations was just residue from a fault on C-phase.... based on inspection results and the fact that hi-pot later passed (although we only tested phase-to-ground, not phase-to-phase). I think that the failure of C-phase was energetic and pushed a pin-hole in the raychem taped which was missed during visual inspection (how could the Raychem tape stay intact when copper inside was melted) and through black soot in the direction of A/B phases and a single copper bead behind A/B phases. I think that due to failure of the C-phase during start (before motor up to speed), A and B phases were drawing more than locked rotor current resulting in the A-phase HDO. And the ground trip was either a result of arcing associated with the C phase failure or else due to unbalanced motor terminal voltages during the fault which would create unbalanced current to ground through the ground-connected motor surge caps. Reasonable?
2 – Any relationship between the pump event and motor event? Most people here believe the lug was already bad and the pump problem created longer duration starting which pushed it over the edge. That may be reasonable, but I’m a little skeptical since we didn’t get a time-overcurrent trip which is what might be expected in that scenario. Looking to explore that further. The pump engineer is also exploring some scenario’s where the trip upon start may have created an unusual hydraulic transient which pushed the pump over the edge, but that’s outside my scope of interest.
3 – How can we detect or prevent this? We do not do periodic tests of winding resistance because we don’t believe it is a very sensitive test, particularly when performed from the switchgear through several hundred yards of cable. To perform from the motor would require determinating. Note also that winding resistance test at rewind shop was sat. After this event I fear the only possible
4 – I have the failed lug as well as a sister crimped connection that we removed on the motor. Are there any inspections that should be done? I am a little skeptical whether there is anything useful that will come out of sending the sister lug out for analysis ($).
5 – Anything else we should look at to understand and prevent this occurence?


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A clarification on the setup of the termbox, in case it’s not obvious from the photo’s.

We have one bus per phase supported on standoff insulators. The motor line T-leads and PD couplign capacitor leads connect to the top of those buses (where the photo’s are) The system power leads and the surge capacitor leads are connected to the bottom of thoses buses (not shown in the photo's). Neutral T-leads T4,T5,T6 are routed over to the right side of the terminal box and connected to a neutral bus on standoff insualtor on right side.

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As far as Question 1 - I'm sure you've probably thought of this, but are you sure Phase A in the relay corresponds with Phase A at the motor Term box? Motor leads get swapped for rotation in a variety of ways.
 
I don't have much time to analyze your event, but regarding PM, there are a couple of options.

1. The PD capacitor you mentioned: Is this for partial discharge monitoring? If so, then disregard.

What were the PD trends before this event?

2. Install infrared view ports in the terminal box so the lugs can be monitored for overheating during operation.

We've had several lug failures occur, some due to improper installation and a very few due to varnish being pulled into the T-lead conductors from the VPI process. The varnish insulated the inner strands from conducting, causing the outer strands to thermally fail during high loads.
 
dpc - the cable connections are pretty tightly controlled with through a cable termination database and associated labeling. But I wouldn't rule out a swap as you suggest. It would make interpretation of the relays more straightforward.

Laplacian - yes those are partial discharge pd coupling caps. No - no unusual trends.

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Laplacian - do you have any experience with those viewing ports? If so, which brand? (Hawk, Mikron).

None of the motor T-leads or other lugs looks to have any varnish that I can see. Would it normally be evident by visual inspection?



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The C phase lug appears to have failed due to fault current and not overheating that would occur because of a bad crimp or varnish in the leads. The physical appearance of both the metal of the lug, the lead insulation and the tape are inconsistent with long term thermal failure.

For some reason, C phase appears to have failed to ground. Is the system resistance grounded?
 
Hi Electricpete.

Fitting 1/O size lugs to #2 size cable is a poor practice asking for problems. That is made frequently by lazy electricians “saving labor hours” because is too hard to match properly the cable strands into the same size terminal lug.
Dissect the two remaining terminal lugs assemblies by a cut lengthwise, a solid ring of copper should keep the strands together “half and half” if the strand are loose and can be separated by hand, the joint was defective.
fo3bdi.jpg

Hot resistance connections deteriorate gradually; the condition gets worst until the extreme condition of melting is reached.
 
I agree the lack of thermal damage away from the lug is interesting and difficult to explain.

You are suggesting the lug arced to ground causing the damage shown? Note there is no ground plane. I would think that kind of arc could only occur after something else started the event. So far an high resistance lug connection is the only thing I can think of to start the event but as you say if it had been high resistance for any period of time during the prior run, we should see some evidence of heat spreading to the terminal and conductor, so I’m not sure what to think.

The system is “low-resistance grounded”. There is a 20 ohm resistor in the neutral of the delta/wye transformer feeding the 13.8kv bus. I think that corresponds to a 400A maximum ground current. 400A ground current and 989A LRC. I guess the phase current and phase-to-ground current would be in-phase so they could combine to reach the 1200A HDO setpoint.

Still kind of unsure about the whole thing. What do you guys think?

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Aolalde - thanks I didn't see your post before.

Actually, I only have one sister lug to work with. I'm not sure where the other one went.

The crimp is a C-type crimp. I was thinking about cutting it straight accross the crimped section (horiziontally in your figure) so I could see if there is any spacing visible between the strands. What is the advantage of cutting it lengthwise (vertical on your figure)?

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I'm not too familiar with the lug and crimping terms, but I understand that "C-type" is also called "single-indent"

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Also do you have any recommendation what type of cutting process to ask for (if I ask our in-house machine shop to cut the lug open)

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Perhaps there was a fatigue failure of the lug itself due to a manufacturing or installation induced defect. The flashover to ground across the other leads/terminations could have then occurred as the ionized gases were created at the point of failure. While a near 400A arc could easily vaporize the small amount of metal involved here in short order, I note no arcing to the corner of the copper bus that the lug was landed on. I would also expect a breakdown to ground to give some advance indication via your PD monitoring.
 
Pete:

51G trip - I assume it is just the ground overcurrent alarm and not a trip? What is the setting and delay of 51G? If you are using a ring-CT, I would suspect the ground-fault current-level to be low (high/low resistance earthed) and the cause of the fault thus not to be a ground-fault.

Your O/C element (alarm) would have operated almost in 4seconds for a current of 30A (1200A primary)
Your O/C element (trip) more than 5sec for the same current.

In my opinion the C-phase wire burned off somewhere during the starting period, (maybe due to a bad connection?) the motor single phased, and phase A tripped on HDO. This single phasing also created an unbalance which would have caused the 51G alarm to operate after a certain delay.

We are also using ring-type CTs for sensitive earth-fault protection and I have seen many times trips during starting (especially on motors) due to the high unbalanced currents. Because we limit our ground-fault currents, all these relays have a long time-delay to override the "faults" during starting.





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One note - The PD monitoring system that we have is not continuous. We go out and get a reading every 3 months. We have no idea what happens in between. Last reading was mid-July.

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Ralph

Our ground current 51G is a trip. As mentioned above this is a low-resistance grounded system with a 20ohm resistor in the 13.8kv transformer neutral. The resistor is sized for 400A which until now I have always assumed was our available ground fault current 8kvL-G/20ohm = 400A. But maybe symmetrical components analysis gives a lower number?

The ground current relay is 12IAC77A801A. The pickup is 1A secondary (40A primary). The time dial setting is 2 which gives a 0.42 second time for a current of 5x pickup (will trip at 0.42 seconds with 200A applied).

To my knowledge, we have not had any problems with spurious trips of this relay with similar setting applied on 30 motors during approximately 20 years.

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Pete:

A quick check shows a ground-fault current roundabout 382A max for a ground-fault at the transformer. For the actual current during such a fault it would depend on how far away the fault occurred down the line.

For your ground-trip what kind of CT-configuration do you use? Is it also one ring-CT around the conductors or is it three CTs with the relay connected in the residual connection? Either way I am not surprised to hear no nuisance trips previously - it is a rather long delay. Just note that a relay in the residual connection is much more prone to trips during unbalanced conditions. Also remember that your actual ground-fault currents seen through the relay will be much lower than your currents seen during the worst unbalance condition.

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aolalde - I somehow had my facts wrong. It was a 1/0 T-lead with a 1/0 lug.

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I don't have direct experience, but was looking at the HawkIR model due to no requirement for special lenses. The other model requires a special lens, but the FOV is much better within the enclosure. It works like an eye socket.

The fault experienced appears to be a termination failure which went phase to ground as others have stated. The ground fault current would have been limited by the length of feeder cable from the transformer and the air space (arc impedance) from the point of fault to the object at ground potential).

Though it is unlikely resin from the VPI process, the way we verified on our motors was to strip a few inches of insulation back on the T-lead, then separate the strands. In our case, the resin had filled all voids in the stranded cable.

In your case, if there is no resin in the conductor, it is likely a poor termination. Since the evidence is gone, it will be hard to prove. All you can do at this point is examine the remaining terminations though they may be proper.

Do you have any electronic relays on the same 13.8kV bus that would have recorded the event? This could go a long way to explain what happened.

Motor starting current will definitely expose a defective termination at all voltage levels. Seen it many times. IR scanning is our most effective PM to mitigate incidents such as these.
 
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