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Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2020)
IEEE Conference Record # 48766; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-5371-1
Electrical Signature Analysis (ESA) of a
Fault injection capable Synchronous
Generator for Inter-turn Stator Faults
K. Sangeetha Kamala
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
India
V. Ishwarya Lakshmi
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
India
P.V. Sunil Nag
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
India
pv_sunil@cb.amrita.edu
Abstract— S ynchronous Generators (S G) are used for many
notable industrial applications. Inter turn stator faults are a
major contributor to S G faults. The industries are always looking
for minimizing the faults that occur to reduce the downtime of
the machine, as it is cost-effective and profitable. Condition
maintenance is performed to identify incipient faults. The
hardware S G is closely modeled to simulate fault injection
capable S G and tested for 8, 16 and 22 turns short circuit in each
phase. Using the signal processing technique, Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT), on readily available stator currents, the
Electrical S ignature Analysis (ES A) is done. S ince this signature
is detected in the incipient stage, the damage caused shall be
drastically reduced. The results established using the ES A
technique to detect S G faults are encouraging and are presented
in this paper.
Keywords—S ynchronous Generator, Inter-turn stator faults,
fault injection capable model, FFT, Electrical S ignature Analysis,
incipient stage fault detection.
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, fault detection in electrical machines has
become extremely essential in a typical industry. Electrical
Signature Analysis [ESA] using signal processing techniques
is the easiest method that is increasingly used to analyze the
developing faults in various electrical machines. This
technique is recommended for its likelihood and non -invasive
features [1]. Fast Fourier Transform [FFT] is a popular and
readily available tool for fault detection. One of the electrical
machines that finds an irreplaceable part in power systems is
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V.V. Induvadhani
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
India
P. Mithra
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
India
C. Santhosh Kumar
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
Amrita School of Engineering, Coimbatore
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
India
cs_kumar@cb.amrita.edu
an SG. Failure of SG accounts for a massive loss of power
generation and is a safety hazard. Hence, to make the power
generation system more available, predicting incipient stages
of the developing fault and making alternative arrangements is
crucial. The SG is a complex machine. It has stator windings,
rotor/ field windings, and damper bars [2].
There are a variety of faults that occur in an SG like stator
inter-turn faults, rotor inter-turn faults, bearing faults, and
eccentricity faults. A share of 38% of the total faults in the
SG is caused by stator faults [3, 4]. Faults in the stator
winding are mainly caused due to insulation degradation due
to over-heating, aging, etc. The stator windings faults such as
shorts and breaks directly affect the sinusoidal shape of the
stator currents [5]. Synchronous machine encompasses both
the generator and motor [6]. The types of short could be
classified as Inter-turn short between the conductors within a
phase, Inter-coil shorts between the coils within a phase, Inter-
phase shorts between any two phases, and Phase to earth
shorts [7]. In [8,13], the type of fault is emphasized, as each
type of fault carries a particular level of danger associated
with if left unattended. Thus, an effort to find the fault at the
incipient stage is required to protect the SG from serious
damage and to have a reliable power system.
An important step to diagnose faults is to develop a
testbed where the fault diagnosis algorithms can be tested. In
the present work, a fault injection capable model of an SG is
designed and implemented in ANSYS Maxwell. This model is
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Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2020)
IEEE Conference Record # 48766; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-5371-1

capable of simulating healthy and faulty generator behavior.

This fault injection capable model if validated can provide us DIMENSIONS OF STATIONARY PART
with flexibility in introducing various kinds of faults which
may not be possible with an actual setup. This model can also OUTER STATOR DIAMETER:233 mm
provide us with the parameters of the analytical model of the INNER STATOR DIAMETER:140 mm
SG. The analytical model can be used for developing model- LENGTH OF THE MACHINE:113 mm
based algorithms for fault diagnosis apart from other uses. TOTAL NUMBER OF SLOTS:36
This facility is really useful as it is difficult to obtain model POLE PITCH:110 mm
parameters for an actual machine. This topic of obtaining the PERIPHERA L SPEED:11 m/s
machine parameters is rarely addressed in various works TOTAL NUMBER OF ARMATURE CONDUCTORS:1980
where they assume that the parameters are available but in the NUMBER OF CONDUCTORS PER PHASE:330
real situation, this does not happen. SLOT HEIGHT: 22 mm
SLOT WIDTH:7 mm
This work explains how to build a fault injection capable
CONDUCTOR AREA:0.963 mm2
Maxwell model for a real 3 kVA generator. This procedure
can be applied to the generator of any rating. The validation CONDUCTOR WIDTH: 1.107 mm
experiments are discussed and the parameters of the analytical DEPTH OF THE STATOR CORE:24.4 mm
model are obtained. In [12], the authors have compared the LENGTH OF AIR-GAP: 0.3 mm
parameters obtained through Finite Element Analysis with the MAXIMUM FLUX DENSITY IN AIR GAP:0.6 Wb/m2
parameters obtained by analytical field calculations. But the PHASE CURRENT:1.7 A
effect of leakage inductance was not included in the work. In
another work, using the magnetizing current at the nominal DIMENSIONS OF ROTOR
value, all inductances are determined [11]. But the
magnetizing current is not easily available from the machine TOTAL NUMBER POLES:4
as stator currents. Some parameters are set to their nominal TOTAL NUMBER OF SLOTS:24
value to reduce the number of unspecified parameters. OUTER DIAMETER:139.4 mm
Assigning nominal values to unestimated parameters wou ld INNER DIAMETER:40 mm
result in unpredictable estimation errors . SLOT HEIGHT:23 mm
Hence this work provides a method of developing an SLOT WIDTH:10 mm
accurate fault injection capable finite element model for a real ROTOR SLOT PITCH:18 mm
SG. This work also obtains its fault ESA using readily NUMBER OF PARALLEL PATHS:1
available stator currents which can be used to develop a FIELD CURRENT:0.9 A
methodology for fault detection. Design methodology, FIELD WINDING RESISTANCE:45.6 ohms
Maxwell model using the design data of the generator, making CONDUCTOR AREA:3.93 mm2
of the Finite Element Method [FEM] model capable of fault CONDUCTOR WIDTH:0.707 mm
injection, the procedure to obtain analytical model parameters
with the help of the Maxwell software, FFT results obtained Short circuits are included in the circuit diagram of the
and the conclusion is discussed in this paper. stator winding. All the self-inductances and mutual
inductances are calculated in terms of the stator currents. The
II. DESIGN AND MODEL OF A 3 KVA SG fault indices are estimated using MATLAB. The fault indices
The desired specifications of the SG are 3kVA, 36 slots are indicators of the severity of the fault and the phase in
stator with a Y connected winding, a cylindrical 4 pole rotor, a which the fault has occurred among the stator windings.
415 Vrms line to line voltage, 4.5 A maximum load current and Hence fault indices could be used to establish the phase in
0.8 leading power factor. It rotates at a synchronous speed of which the turns are shorted which could be considered a future
1500 rpm and has a DC excitation of 220V, 2A, 50Hz. The scope.
testbed is specifically made by taking out tapping from the
stator windings from all three phases, which facilitates fault III. FINITE ELEMENT IMPLEMENTATION
injection. Several machine models have been simulated using Park’s
According to [9], a 3kVA SG was theoretically designed equation by calculating the electromagnetic and mechanical
variables. The FEM is more preferable and accurate as it
and the following dimensions were obtained with careful
assumptions for average electrical loading (ac = 13,000 A/m) provides both electrical and electromagnetic magnitudes from
solving the field equations that otherwise is difficult.
and average mechanical loading (Bav = 0.4 Wb/m2 ). The stator
and Rotor dimensions are listed below. As per the design, the ANSYS RMxprt Model of 3kVA
SG is simulated. Using the solution data, a 2D model is
developed and fault injection is facilitated by splitting the
stator coils and designing the external circuit accordingly as in
Fig. 1.

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Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2020)
IEEE Conference Record # 48766; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-5371-1
Fig. 1. ANSYS Maxwell 2D simulation of the 3kVA SG
The symmetry of the SG model is a key factor in getting a
desirable output voltage [10]. So, coils in all the stator slots
are split evenly in the ANSYS Model, as shown in Fig. 1.
Each phase of the stator winding consists of 27 turns. The
external circuit is designed in a way such that the short
produced is between 8,16 and 22 turns of the same phase,
achieved by introducing a switching device between the
conductors. This switch is programmed to close after a certain
period, causing a short [14]. The simulations are run for 2
seconds, one second each for the healthy and faulty behavior
for all the analyzed cases of the inter-turn stator faults. With
an external sampling frequency of 500Hz, the resulting
induced voltages and currents are sampled.
The model of the SG developed based on the real SG of
rating 3kVA is accurate. To establish the above statement, the
stator current signals of the real SG and the simulated machine
are studied to estimate the RMS error. At each time step (i),
the square of the difference between the real and the simulated
current value at steady state is taken and added up together.
The square root of the sum gives the RMS error. This is
extended for all the samples obtained for each test case. The
resulting error indexes are tabulated in the 5th column of
TABLE I. The error-index is not more than 8.00 which
ensures the accuracy of the testbed (i.e.) the simulated
machine is very close to the real machine
= ( ~ )
I. PARAMETER COMPUTATION
The parameters obtained from the Maxwell datasheet are
unsaturated steady-state parameters, transient parameters, and
time constants. To estimate the parameters in the system, some
more parameters like Mutual inductances relating the stator,
the rotor, and also the damper windings are required.
Parameter Computation is done to extract the unknown
parameters of hardware from the data obtained from the
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Maxwell model. The machine equations are derived based on
the inductances. The machine generally has two axes, direct
(d) axis and quadrature (q) axis. Power system stability
implies that a system is stable even when it is subjected to
some disturbances and maintains the synchronism in the
synchronous machines. The modeling and analysis of the SG
are done and the steady-state and the transient behavior of the
machine are analyzed. Per Unit Representation of inductances
in Fig.6 are made to avoid computational complexity in the
system and the dimensionless ratio helps us in an easy
understanding of the characteristics. Its values are shown in
Fig. 7.
II. FFT RESULTS
ESA usually consists of an FFT (Fast Fourier Transform)
algorithm to reflect spectra-shaped time-domain signals which
are called electrical signatures. The electrical signatures
consist of the frequency component in the x-axis and the
magnitude component in the y-axis.
In this paper, the FFT is performed using MATLAB
software’s algorithm. The FFT algorithm constitutes
( )( )
( )= ()
Where,
( )/
is an Nth root of unity.
The plotting of FFT consists of the frequency vector in the
x-axis and the FFT value of the current values. In this paper,
ESA of the frequency spectra is performed on the FFT of
stator currents. These stator currents are obtained from the
Maxwell model by injecting the 8, 16, and 22 turn short circuit
faults. The components in the frequency spectra whose
magnitudes change when a fault is introduced are indicated as
ESA fault.
The case 1, 2, 3 belongs to phase A with 8, 16 and 22
shorted turns respectively. Similarly, phase B and phase C
have three cases each. Each case has three-phase stator
currents. This could be repeated for different kinds of loads.
This analysis is done for an SG load of 0.5A. All the tes t cases
were analyzed for patterns occurring in the magnitude of the
third harmonics (at 150Hz) and are specified in the 6th column
of TABLE I.
Let us consider fault case 1, where 8 turns are shorted in
phase A. When this case occurs, the ESA magnitude of phases
A, B, and C are 0.01655, 0.09657, and 0.11604 respectively
and the corresponding healthy case values are 0.05241,
0.07094 and 0.07312 respectively. It can be seen that the ESA
magnitude of phase A is reduced in case 1 when compared
with the healthy case. However, the ESA magnitude is
increased in phases B and C of case 1, than that of the healthy
case. This is shown in TABLE I.
The FFT of Phase A current under healthy, case 1, case 2,
and case 3 are given in Fig. 2 to 5 respectively. The Fig. 3 to 5
shows that as the number of turns in the fault increases the
magnitude of the third harmonic frequency also increases
slightly. However, the ESA of cases 1, 2, and 3 is less than the
healthy third harmonic magnitude shown in Fig. 2. It is
observed from TABLE 1 that each of the phase currents of
173
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Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2020)
IEEE Conference Record # 48766; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-5371-1

cases 4, 5, and 6 belonging to phase B shorts and cases 7, 8,

and 9 belonging to phase C shorts have these characteristics.

Fig.5. FFT of CASE 3 Phase A current

Fig.2. FFT of healthy Phase A Current T ABLE I: ERROR INDEX BET WEEN T HE MODELED SG AND T HE
REAL SG

∇I
RMS
Phase Number
Phase (e rror inde x) ESA
shorted Test Case of turns
For 0.5A Magnitude
shorted
LO AD

HEALT HY - A 4.53 0.05241

- B 4.58 0.07094
C 4.42 0.07312
CASE 1 8 A 0.81 0.01656
B 1.61 0.09657
C 1.28 0.11604
CASE 2 16 A 2.31 0.01879
Fig.3. FFT of CASE 1 Phase A current
A B 4.54 0.10331
C 3.85 0.11909
CASE 3 22 A 3.98 0.01948
B 4.74 0.10520
C 4.77 0.11969
CASE 4 8 A 5.97 0.11624
B 4.81 0.02456
C 5.97 0.10671
CASE 5 16 A 3.86 0.12041
B B 3.49 0.02592
C 2.94 0.11476
CASE 6 22 A 4.36 0.12128
B 3.45 0.02619
C 4.27 0.11712
CASE 7 8 A 3.68 0.10363
Fig.4. FFT of CASE 2 Phase A current
B 4.23 0.11937
C 1.56 0.00619
CASE 8 16 A 4.45 0.11263
C B 5.61 0.12421
C 3.82 0.00795
CASE 9 22 A 6.23 0.11512
B 7.35 0.12525
C 5.75 0.00886

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Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Communication and Electronics Systems (ICCES 2020)
IEEE Conference Record # 48766; IEEE Xplore ISBN: 978-1-7281-5371-1

−( + ) 0 0 0 -μ * ( ad + L) 0 0
⎛ 0 −( + ) 0 0 0 0 -μ ∗ ( ad + L
) 0 ⎞
⎜ 0 0 − 0 0 0 0 0 μ ∗( )⎟
⎜ − 0 0 0 μ *Lad 0 0 ⎟
⎜ ⎟
=⎜ − 0 0 0 μ *Lad 0 0 ⎟
⎜ 0 − 0 0 0 0 μ *Laq 0 ⎟
⎜-μ * ( + L ) 0 0 μ *Lad μ *Lad 0 0 0 ⎟
ad
⎜ ⎟
0 -μ ∗ ( ad + L) 0 0 0 μ *Laq 0 0
⎝ 0 0 -μ ∗ ( ) 0 0 0 0 0 μ ∗( )⎠
Fig.6. Per unit expression of mutual inductances obtained through parameter computation

−3.5509 0 0 3.4782 3.4782 0 −0.0877 0 0

0 −3.5509 0 0 0 3.4782 0 −3.5509e-04 0
⎛ ⎞
⎜ 0 0 −0.007267 0 0 0 0 0 7.2667e-06 ⎟
⎜−3.4782 0 0 3.5859 3.4782 0 0.0859 0 0 ⎟
= ⎜−3.4782 0 0 3.4782 3.5859 0 0.0859 0 0 ⎟
⎜ 0 −3.4782 0 0 0 3.5893 0 3.4782e-04 0 ⎟
⎜−0.0877 0 0 0.0859 0.0859 0 0. .0039 0 0 ⎟
0 −3.5509e-04 0 0 0 3.4782e-04 0 7.3015 − 06 0
⎝ 0 0 −7.2667e-0.6 0 0 0 0 0 7.2667e-06 ⎠
Fig.7. Per unit inductance values as obtained through parameter computatio n

[4] Z. Wei, W. Liu, Z. Zhang, N. Jiao, J. Peng and T . Meng, "Rotating

VII. CONCLUSION
The designed 3kVA, 36 Slot, four Pole non-salient SG
model matches the real machine due to its magnetic field
densities, low current density, low losses, and proximity to the
rated operating parameters. The symmetry of this model has to
be proper to obtain an appropriate FFT. The industries always
look for minimizing the fault to reduce the downtime of the
machines could make use of this condition maintenance
analysis to increase reliability and availability. As the fault
induced in the machine due to the number of shorted -turns
increases, the magnitude of the third harmonic frequency of
the stator current FFT also increases. This electrical fault
signature of the inter-turn stator faults could be detected. This
could also be used to diagnose the phase in which the fault has
occurred in the SG and the severity of the fault.
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