Vibration Model of a Power Capacitor Core under Various Harmonic Electrical Excitations

Power capacitors are widely used in power transmission systems. During their operation, an electric force acting on the electrodes of the power capacitors actuates mechanical vibrations and radiates an audible noise. Considering a power capacitor as a general system, the frequency response with the electric force as the input and mechanical vibration as the output have been measured by engineers in recent years and used to evaluate the acoustic and mechanical features of products. Accidentally, it was found that the frequency of the capacitor vibration was not consistent with its excitation due to electro-mechanical coupling. This electro-mechanical coupling had not been considered in previous vibration models of power capacitors. Therefore, a new vibration model of power capacitors was built up in this paper and a so-called multi-frequency vibration characteristic was revealed. A theoretical analysis showed that the electric force and mechanical vibration of the power capacitors were coupled, which resulted in the multi-frequency vibration. The vibration frequency response was measured and the result was consistent with the vibration model proposed in this paper. Once the frequency of the electric force was near half the natural frequency of the power capacitor, a predominant multi-frequency vibration was triggered and the power capacitor was in a superharmonic resonance.