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An electric motor is an electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy.
Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a wire winding to generate force in the form of torque applied on the motor's shaft. An electric generator is mechanically identical to an electric motor, but operates in reverse, converting mechanical energy into electrical energy.
Electric motors can be powered by direct current (DC) sources, such as from batteries or rectifiers, or by alternating current (AC) sources, such as a power grid, inverters or electrical generators.
Electric motors may be classified by considerations such as power source type, construction, application and type of motion output. They can be brushed or brushless, single-phase, two-phase, or three-phase, axial or radial flux, and may be air-cooled or liquid-cooled.
Standardized motors provide power for industrial use. The largest are used for ship propulsion, pipeline compression and pumped-storage applications, with output exceeding 100 megawatts.
Applications include industrial fans, blowers and pumps, machine tools, household appliances, power tools, vehicles, and disk drives. Small motors may be found in electric watches. In certain applications, such as in regenerative braking with traction motors, electric motors can be used in reverse as generators to recover energy that might otherwise be lost as heat and friction.
Electric motors produce linear or rotary force (torque) intended to propel some external mechanism. This makes them a type of actuator. They are generally designed for continuous rotation, or for linear movement over a significant distance compared to its size. Solenoids also convert electrical power to mechanical motion, but over only a limited distance.
History[edit]
Main article: History of the electric motor
Early motors[edit]
Faraday's electromagnetic experiment, 1821, the first demonstration of the conversion of electrical energy into motion[1]
Before modern electromagnetic motors, experimental motors that worked by electrostatic force were investigated. The first electric motors were simple electrostatic devices described in experiments by Scottish monk Andrew Gordon and American experimenter Benjamin Franklin in the 1740s.[2][3] The theoretical principle behind them, Coulomb's law, was discovered but not published, by Henry Cavendish in 1771. This law was discovered independently by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb in 1785, who published it so that it is now known with his name.[4] Due to the difficulty of generating the high voltages they required, electrostatic motors were never used for practical purposes.
