A Novel Indicator-Based Online Diagnostics Technique of Interturn Short-Circuit Faults in Synchronous Reluctance Machines

In recent years, the adoption of synchronous reluctance machine (SynRM) drives for safety-critical equipment has witnessed notorious growth. The difficulties inherent to monitoring and fault diagnostics of SynRM drives are highly prominent. Interturn short-circuit faults (ITSCFs) are among the failure modes, which are most critical and, simultaneously, more challenging to identify, in all types of motor drives. Still, the effective diagnostic task becomes even more challenging in SynRM drives because of the harmonic pollution and intricated control configuration. To overcome the aforementioned challenges, the current research proposes a universal and effective online diagnostics technique, based on the computation and monitoring of a relevant severity factor, defined as the ratio of the zero, negative, and positive voltage symmetrical components. The short time least square Prony’s (STLSP) approach is used to implement this method online in LabVIEW environment. In addition to the wide applicability of the method, the obviation of any motor parameter’s estimation and reduced requirements regarding variables’ measurements make the proposed approach extremely advantageous for motor drives with complex control architecture and operating conditions. The experimental results demonstrate the excellent generalization capability of the proposed method, as well as high accuracy and robustness. To confirm the claims, the proposed technique is implemented on a 2.2-kW SynRM drive, tested in both healthy and faulty conditions.