Industrial Electronics Society

A Simple and Efficient Current Based Method for Inter-turn

Fault Diagnosis of Brush-less Direct Current Motors

Journal: IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics

Manuscript ID TII-20-0610

Manuscript Type: Regular Paper

Keywords: brush-less direct current motor, inter-turn fault, modal current

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1
2
3
A Simple and Efficient Current Based Method
4
5 for Inter-turn Fault Diagnosis of Brush-less
6
7
8
Direct Current Motors
9
10 .
11
12
13 [11] to achieve the desired results. For fault magnetic field
Abstract—Fault diagnosis of brushless direct current (BLDC)
14 motors has recently gained more attention. Inter-turn faults in
variations can be used, which induces voltage in the search
15 coils as input. Although using the search coils lead to high
BLDC motors distort three-phase currents waveforms, leading to
16 an asymmetrical condition. This paper introduces a simple and accuracy, it is not cost-efficient in low-power motors.
17 efficient method to identify inter-turn faults based on one modal Moreover, the method cannot be considered as a general
18 current and four different simple indices. The modal current is technique for different types of BLDC motors. A parameter
19 derived by proper linear mixing of measured three-phase estimation-based technique has been introduced in [11]. In this
currents. Following the initial processing of the modal current, mathematical-based method, inverter voltage, dc current, and
20 three main indices including moving mean, variance, and signal rotor angular speed must be measured to diagnose the fault.
21 energy are obtained in parallel. Also, an auxiliary correlation- Inter-turn fault can be also diagnosed by input impedance
22 based index is suggested to enhance the method for [12]. Although the method has some advantages, high
23 discrimination of faulty conditions from non-faulty ones. The
computational burden and high demand of inputs are its main
24 fault detection is made by passing at least two main indices (out
drawbacks. The scheme needs rotation speed, input current,
25 of three indices), and also an auxiliary index from a predefined
threshold. The proposed technique is evaluated under different input voltage, resistance, and inductance to detect the fault,
26 and all these render it difficult and almost impractical to
loads, speeds, and fault severities in two different dataset: data
27 from a simulated motor in Maxwell finite element package, and a implement. Electromagnetic torque signal has been utilized
28 real 4-pole motor. Moreover, the method is compared with other for inter-turn fault diagnosis in different BLDC motors. These
29 methods from different aspects. The results confirm a high techniques identify the faults with the application of wavelet
30 accuracy and speed of the fault detection in the proposed transform [13], neuro-Fuzzy [14], and adaptive neuro-Fuzzy
31 approach. inference systems (ANFIS) [15]. Since the electromagnetic
Index Terms — Brushless direct current motor, inter-turn
32 torque signal is not easily accessible, these methods cannot be
fault, modal current.
33 easily implemented. Stator input current frequency pattern can
34 I. INTRODUCTION
also be generally utilized for inter-turn fault diagnosis [16-18].
35 Since any fault follows a definite frequency pattern, such
36
37
W ITH the development of industrial technologies,
brushless direct-current (BLDC) motors have attracted
interests as a large drive system in many industrial
pattern can be used for fault diagnosis. However, in BLDC
motors the harmonics frequency depends on the speed, so it is
38 difficult to identify the current spectrum for the fault pattern
fields. These motors manifest higher efficiency, higher power
39 during motor operation.
factor, and higher torque compared to other motors.
40 This paper proposes a novel technique to detect the inter-
Considering their wide applications, on-line condition
41 monitoring and fault diagnosis of BLDC motors are essential turn faults in BLDC motors using a multi-index current-based
42 for enhancement of reliability and continuous operation of the method. The main processed signal in the suggested method is
43 system [1-3]. a modal current which is based on linear mixing of measured
44 There are different types of faults that can be occured in three-phase currents. This signal shortens the computation
45 BLDC motors, and one of the major ones is the stator winding time and lessens the required memory. To identify the inter-
46 inter-turn short circuit (SC) which is caused by insulation turn faults, three different indices including moving mean,
47 defect. This fault is extremely harmful to BLDC motors variance, and signal energy are applied to the modal current in
48 because it can rapidly grow and result in motor failure [4-6]. parallel. Moreover, to distinguish the fault conditions from
49 That is why quick and accurate on-line diagnosis of this fault non-faulty ones, such as load change, an auxiliary correlation
50 is vital. In practice, there are some crucial features needed for based index is considered. To decide whether the fault occurs
51 on-line inter-turn fault diagnosis in BLDC motors, including: in BLDC motors, at least two indices (out of three) and the
52 1) Minimum the number of sensors for the proposed signal auxiliary index must exceed a predefined threshold.
53 sensing to lower the drive cost. Applications of these indices result in a fast and reliable fault
54 2) Utilizing a method with low computation burden to merge detection method. To evaluate the method in different
55 the drive system and the condition monitoring system. conditions, such as various loads, speeds, and fault severities,
56 3) Choosing a reliable and precise fault diagnosis method. two different datasets, including a finite element-based (FE)
57 Many techniques have been so far proposed for fault diagnosis simulation motor and a 4-pole BLDC motor, are considered.
58 of BLDC motors [7-10]. Search coil sensors have been used in Furthermore, the performance of the method is compared with
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1 some other similar methods from different aspects. the different coefficients, there is no direct subtracting or
2 To contributions of the proposed method include: summation of two signals. Consequently, it is guaranteed that
3 ● Application of modal current for inter-turn fault detection the transient behavior of the signals is unchanged and modal
4 in BLDC motors, and processing just one signal instead of signal preserves all the transient data in different conditions.
5 three current signals. Using the modal signal reduces the processing time and
6
● Simple implementation procedure as the algorithm only simplifies the development of the proposed algorithm. Fig. 1
7
requires simple operators. represents a typical three-phase current and its normalized
8
● Small computation burden and cost-efficient. modal signal for a typical inter-turn fault.
9
● Taking into account different challenging conditions in
10 C. 3rd Step: Calculating the Proposed Indices
evaluating the method.
11 To make suitable criteria for the inter-turn fault diagnosis in
● Having relatively high accuracy and speed.
12 BLDC motors, three different simple mathematical-based
13 indices are proposed. It should be mentioned that all of these
II. PROPOSED METHOD
14 indices are computed in parallel. In the following subsections,
15 The proposed method employs the measured three-phase
each index is explained more in details.
16 current signal as the main signal to identify the faults. At the
17 beginning, the measured currents are normalized and then the C.1. Moving Average-based Index
18 modal current is built up based on these normalized signals. The first proposed index is the moving average-based one.
19 Having the modal current, three different moving indices The moving averaging for a sample discrete signal x(t), for a
20 including mean-based index (MBI), variance-based index window with T0 length, is as follows [22, 23]:
21 (VBI) and energy-based index (EBI) are calculated in parallel
1 k
22 to recognize the inter-turn fault condition. Application of these MA k 
T0
 x k (t ) (3)
23 three indices enables the method to investigate the signal from n  k T 0

24 three different aspects, and increase the reliability and where MAk is the mean of signal x(t) in kth window. In the
25 quickness of the fault diagnosis process. Also, these indices proposed method, moving average is applied to the modal
26 are easily computed by simple mathematical operators. Hence, current signal S, with the number of samples in one cycle
27 the method can be easily implemented online. To differentiate designated as Ts, and the time step of one sample designated as
28 the non-faulty conditions, such as load change, from faulty t. So, the proposed moving mean-based index (MBI) is derived
29 ones, an auxiliary index is also computed. The detailed as follows:
30 description of the method are as follows: 1 k
31 A. 1st Step: Signal Normalizing
MBI k   S k (t )
T S n k TS
(4)
32 The value of the proposed MBI is almost unchanged in the
Amplitude of the current signals differs at different loads.
33 motors but it suddenly changes following the inter-turn fault.
As a result, to simplify the signal processing, the signals must
34 Therefore, the MBI is compared with a threshold to decide
be expressed in per unit (pu) to limit the range of amplitude of
35 whether this index flags the fault occurrence or not. The value
all signals (i). This is done by dividing all samples to the peak
36 of the threshold for this index is considered ±0.22, using a
current (im) as follows:
37 straight-forward algorithm named “Otsu thresholding method”
38 i
i pu  (1) [24].
39 im
40 C.2. Moving Variance-based Index
This action places all signals in the range of -1 and 1. So, the
41 Moving variance-based index is the second proposed index
currents of motor are easily considered under different
42 to distinguish the inter-turn fault in BLDC motors. Knowing
operating conditions.
43 the formula for moving variance, the proposed variance-based
44 B. 2nd Step: Transforming Normalized Current Signals to index (VBI) is derived as follows:
45 Modal Signal
46 Since inter-turn faults may occur in different phases, all
47 three phases of the motor must be taken into consideration. By
48 transforming three-phase currents to a modal signal, the
49 computation time is shortened and less memory is required
50 [19, 20]. Consequently, instead of three-phase signals, the
51 modal signal is processed. The modal signal is a linear
52 combination of the three-phase currents as follows:
53 S  S a   S b   S c (2)
54
where S is the current modal signal, Sa, Sb, and Sc are the
55
normalized signals of three-phase currents respectively. Also
56
α, β, and γ are the modal signal coefficients considered as 1, 2,
57 Fig.1. Three-phase currents and the modal current for an inter-turn fault.
and -3, respectively [21]. Since the phases are multiplied by
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1 and μy are the mean values of the variables x and y. Value of

2 1 k
3
VBI k   (S n  s )2
T s n k Ts
(5) the correlation coefficient varies between -1 and 1 where cxy=1
expresses a full direct relation between two variables and
4 where Si denotes each sample of the modal current, s is the cxy=-1 shows that there is a full reversed relation between the
5 average of samples of the modal current in the processed two variables. The reversed or negative relation means that if a
6 window, and Ts is the number of samples in one period of the variable increases, the other variable decreases and vice versa.
7 modal current. Similar to the behavior of the MBI, the VBI has If the correlation coefficient is zero, there is no linear relation
8 some smooth fluctuations in the healthy motor but it abruptly between the two variables.
9 changes in the motor with inter-turn fault. Likewise the index Taking into account the above-mentioned explanations, an
10 MBI, this index is compared with a threshold to characterize index based on the correlation coefficient is defined for
11 the fault occurrence. The value of the threshold for this index discrimination purposes. To do so, at the first step, samples of
12 is set to 11.33 for simulation-based data, and 6.38 for each cycle of the modal current is considered as the processed
13 experimental dataset using the Otsu thresholding method. window and the correlation coefficient of these samples is
14
C.3. Moving energy-based index computed with the samples from the previous cycle. Then, the
15
proposed index entitled as the correlation based-index (CBI) is
16 For inter-turn faults with few numbers of SC windings,
defined as the absolute value of computed correlation
17 current waveform variations are insensible and hard to be
coefficient subtracted from the absolute value of the previous
18 distinguished. Therefore, an appropriate index must be capable
calculated correlation coefficient. The mathematical
19 to indicate the fault accurately. To this end, the concept of
presentation of the auxiliary index is presented as follows:
20 energy for discrete signals is utilized. Application of this
21 concept enables the method to detect the low severity faults. CBI n  cS ( n ),S ( n 1)  cS (n 1),S (n ) (8)
22 Applying the concept to the modal signal S, the proposed
where S(n) denotes the samples of nth cycle of the modal
23 energy-based index (EBI) is defined as follows:
24 k
current, and the S(n-1) and S(n+1) are the samples in one
1
25 EBI k 
Ts

n  k T s
Sn2 (6) cycle before and after the processed window. For
26 differentiating among faults and load change, the CBI is
This index has the same behavior as the other two compared with the predefined threshold. The value of the
27 mentioned indices. Also, it is compared with a threshold to
28 threshold for this index is 0.45 based on the Otsu thresholding
identify the fault, where the value is set to 12.01 and 6.51 for method. Flowchart of the proposed method is depicted in Fig.
29 simulation and experimental datasets respectively, relying on
30 2 in which at least two main indices, out of MBI, VBI and EBI,
the Otsu thresholding method. and the auxiliary index CBI must pass the defined threshold to
31
32 D. 4th Step: Calculating the Auxiliary Index characterize the faulty conditions.
33 Up to this stage, the fault has been well diagnosed.
34 However, to prevent any error in the diagnosis procedure,
35 different conditions, such as sudden load change, must be
36 investigated. To improve the reliability of the method, an iA iB iC

37 auxiliary stage must be considered to differentiate the load

38 change from the faulty condition. i p .u . 
i
im
39 It is known that inter-turn fault in BLDC motors can distort
40 the signal shape change its amplitude [10]. However, the
41 sudden change of the load only affects the amplitude [16], and S  S a  S b   S c
42 this specific behavior can be utilized as a feature to prevent the
43 mal-operation of the method. To provide a suitable criterion
44 for distinguishing the sudden load change from fault
45 occurrence, a correlation coefficient-based index is proposed.
46 The correlation coefficient is one of the statistical tools that CBI n  TH 4 EBI n  TH 3 V BI n  TH 2 MBI n  TH 1

47 show the intensity and type of the relations between two

48 signals.
49 Correlation coefficient between two given variables x and y
50 is defined as follows:
51 t
52  (x i  x )( y i   y )
53 c xy 
t T 0

54 t t (7)
55  ( x i  x ) 2  ( y i   y ) 2
t T 0 t T 0
56 where cxy denotes the correlation between variables x and y, T0 Fig. 2. Flowchart of proposed method.
57 is the length of data window, t is the sample number, while μx
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1 SIMULATION STUDY AND ITS RESULTS TABLE I.

2 SPECIFICATIONS OF SIMULATED BLDC MOTOR
3 In this section, the details of simulation study for evaluating
4 the proposed method are described. This study is based on the Parameter Value Parameter Value
5 data derived from a simulated motor using FE analysis. In Supply Voltage (V) 36 Tooth width (mm) 7.1
what follows, the first simulated test cases are explained and Rated speed (rpm) 360 Slot opening (mm) 2
6 Rated torque (Nm) 5.5 Air gap width (mm) 1
7 then the performance of the proposed method is presented. Number of slot 15 Rotor outer diameter (mm) 55
8 A. Finite Element Simulation of BLDC Motor
Number of poles 10 PM thickness (mm) 2
Stator outer diameter
9 100 No. of turn/ phase 135
For FE-based simulations of the BLDC motor, Maxwell (mm)
10 Stator inner diameter
software has been utilized. Specifications of the modeled 57 Phase resistance (mΩ) 435
11 (mm)
BLDC motor are summarized in Table I. To model the BLDC
12 Yoke height (mm) 3.7 Self-inductance (mH) 1.48
motor precisely, two-dimensional (2D) FE-based method is
13 in Figs. 4(b) to Fig. 4(e). According to Fig. 4(b), the MBI
applied.
14 index exceeds the predefined threshold only after 3.2 ms of
15 A.1. Modeling the healthy motor fault occurrence. As shown in this figure, the MBI is close to
16 To simulate the BLDC motor precisely, the drive system zero in the operating healthy motor, but it goes through
17 must be taken into consideration. Here, ANSYS Simplorer is considerable variation when the fault occurs. Also, as
18 employed for such a purpose. This software is coupled with presented in Fig. 4(c), the VBI index is nearly constant during
19 the Maxwell software to take into account the impacts of the the healthy mode (here 9.8), but in the case of fault, its value
20 drive system on the healthy and faulty motor. increases significantly. This index passes the threshold after
21 There are different methods for controlling the BLDC 4.1 ms of fault occurrence. Behavior of the EBI index is
22 motor with variable torque or speed [25]. Here, a closed-loop similar to the VBI index which exceeds the threshold after
23 variable speed drive system with PI controller is used. The about 5 ms.
24 output of the PI controller is applied to the switches of the The auxiliary CBI index confirms the presence of an inter-
25 inverter to control the speed. The schematic of designed drive turn fault in the motor as its value exceeds the threshold after
26 by Simplorer has been shown in Fig. 6. This drive has six approximately 2 cycles of the fault occurrence. So, the method
27 switches and the motor is controlled with constant speed. The indicates that fault has been occurred, and that it has been
28 reference speed is input of the drive, and speed of the motor is successfully identified by the method.
29 sensed by Hall effect sensors via feedback. Finally, the motor
30 operates at the reference speed by PI controller. III. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
31
A.2. Modeling the faulty motor A. Practical test bench
32
33 It is clear that the model of healthy and faulty BLDC motor A three-phase 4-pole 370W 48V BLDC motor, shown in
34 must differ. To model the inter-turn fault of the stator winding Fig. 5, has been tested to validate the proposed.
35 in one coil, the coil must be divided into faulty and healthy The specifications of the test bench and the motor are
36 turns. The faulty turns are considered as one individual phase summarized in Table II and Table III, respectively. The test
37 with zero excitation. bench contains the BLDC motor, a driver board, a load which
38 To evaluate the faulty cases in different conditions and have comprises a DC motor and three rheostats, a power supply,
39 a wide challenging dataset, motors with 3, 6, 9, and 18 SC current probes, and an oscilloscope. The driver board includes
40 turns are modeled. When a real inter-turn fault occurs, the an inverter associated with a controller, the schematic diagram
41 resistance of the short circuit turns tend to zero. Therefore, SC of which has been presented in the Fig. 6. The controller must
42 windings in Simplorer are simulated without inserting control the six switching modes based on the rotor position
43 resistance; such modeling will well agree with the real case. and output of Hall effect sensors of the motor. The driver has
44 been designed with a closed-loop configuration to control the
B. Simulation Results speed of the motor using a PWM technique based on PI
45
46 The proposed method is verified with the simulation results controller. The connected load is a 12 V DC machine,
47 having more than 60 different conditions including faults with operating as a generator coupled with the BLDC motor. Also,
48 different SC turns and different loads. the terminal of the DC machine is connected to there rheostats
49 The SC turns varied from 3 to 18 turns, out of 135 turns in to emulate different loading conditions.
50 total. To have a better visualization on the performance of the Inter-turn faults can be created by a SC between turns of a
51 method, a typical 6-turn SC inter-turn fault is taken into coil of the motor. To implement inter-turn fault practically,
52 consideration. Fig. 4 shows the measured currents and the four wires are welded to different points of the coil turns. This
53 proposed indices. enables us to create faults with different severities. In inter-
54 As shown in Fig. 4(a), the three-phase current follows a turn faults of real conditions, the faulty turn resistance is
55 constant symmetrical pattern in healthy conditions, however, negligible [3]. So, the faults are emulated without any
56 in the fault case, shape and amplitude of the current waveform resistances. Moreover, to have a wide challenging dataset, the
57 change significantly. The proposed indices have been shown experiments were done with different input voltages and loads.
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1
2
3 DC
4 Voltage
Source
5
6 Motor’s
speed
7
Desired
8 Switches’
gates signal
PWM PI
controller speed
9 (a)
Fig. 6. Schematic of designed closed-loop driver.
10
TABLE II.
11
SPECIFICATIONS OF BLDC MOTOR
12
13 Parameter Value
14 Rated Power (W) 370
15
Voltage (V) 48
16
Current (A) 10.5
17
18 (b) Number of poles 4
19 Rated speed (rpm) 3000
20 Rated torque (Nm) 1.2
21 Maximum torque (Nm) 3.6
22 Length (mm) 115
23
Weight (kg) 2.5
24
25
TABLE III.
26 SPECIFICATIONS OF THE DRIVER AND THE TEST BENCH DEVICES
(c)
27
28 Parameter Value
29 DC voltage source (V) 48
30 Current probe GWINSTEK GCP-100
31 Microcontroller DSPIC33FJ128MC708
Switch IRFP150N MOSFET
32
Frequency (kHz) 5
33 Switch driver IR2130
34
35 (d) Considering the permissible current of the rheostats, the
36 tests were carried out with maximum current 2 A.
37 Here, data of more than 30 different test cases are gathered.
38 It should be mentioned that current waveforms were gathered
39 using a data logger with the sampling frequency of 5 kHz.
40
B. Experimental results
41
42 In this subsection, the proposed method is assessed by some
43 gathered experimental data from different experiments. Fig. 7
(e)
44 Fig. 4. Inputs and outputs of proposed method for a fault with 6 SC turns in
shows the typical fault current waveforms for different
45 simulated BLDC motor; (a) three phase currents (b) MBI index (c) VBI index
severities. As shown in this figure, changes in the amplitude
46 (d) EBI index and (e) CBI index. and the waveform of the faults with higher severities are more
47 significant compared with the healthy operation mode of the
48 motor. In other words, the faults with lower severities are
49 much harder to identify. So, this type of inter-turn faults
50 (which has more probability of occurrence than high-severity
51 faults) is considered here to be studies in more details. Further
52 on, a typical low-severity inter-turn fault is investigated.
53 Fig. 8 shows the current waveforms and the proposed
54 indices for practical fault data. It should be mentioned that this
55 specifically studied fault was occurred at 10% of the nominal
56 load and 40% of the nominal speed. The depicted MBI in Fig.
57 8(b) shows that this index has failed detect the fault. This issue
58 Fig.5. Practical test bench for experimental verification.
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1 B) Input impedance based technique: In this method [12],

2 the winding function theory is applied to calculate the input
3 impedance. Also, the proposed index in this approach utilizes
4
the real RMS values of the input current and voltage to
5
compute the input impedance and compare it with the dataset.
6
C) Method based on 3rd harmonic components of currents:
7
This approach involves the harmonic analysis of line currents
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17 Fig.7. Experimental fault current waveforms with different severities: (a) low
18 severity (b) medium severity and (c) high severity.
19
20 can be related to in considerable variations in amplitude and (a)
21 waveform pattern of the modal current.
22 However, the VBI and EBI indices accurately characterize
23 the faulty condition in 18 ms and 19 ms after the fault
24 occurrence, respectively. The CBI index also manifests that
25 the type of change was an inter-turn fault, because its value
26 surpassed the threshold. So, the method effectively detects this
27 challenging case as an inter-turn fault.
28 One of the advantages of the proposed method is that it is
able to discriminate the faults from load change with a (b)
29
30 desirable accuracy. By the load changing, the modal current
31 alters. This is very similar with the faulty motor, which results
32 in false detection of the method. To assess the performance of
33 the proposed approach in the load changing, the values of the
34 rheostat vary.
35 Fig. 9 shows the current waveforms and the modal current
36 of a typical load changing in the laboratory setup. In this case,
37 the rheostat resistance decreases to 75% of nominal load,
(c)
38 which results in increasing the current waveforms. The
39 proposed indices depicted in Fig.10 specify that a change has
40 been occurred in the motor. But the CBI index discriminates
41 these changes as non-faulty condition, because its value did
42 not reach the threshold, as shown in Fig.10(d). The results of
43 the application of the proposed method in other load change
44 conditions confirm that the proposed method can operate well
45 under healthy cases.
46 (d)
47 IV. COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT
48 In this section, the performance and accuracy of the
49 proposed method are compared with other similar approaches.
50 All the methods are evaluated using the same data under
51 similar conditions.
52 A) Detection coil based approach: According to the
53 proposed algorithm in [23], the inter-turn faults are detected
54 using detection coil which can sense flux variations. In this
55 method, two different decision logics, based on the average (e)
56 detection coil flux density and average detection coil voltage, Fig.8. Input and outputs of proposed method for a low-severity fault in
57 are employed. practical test bench; (a) three phase currents (b) MBI index (c) VBI index (d)
58 EBI index and (e) CBI index.
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1 TABLE IV.
2 COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF PROPOSED METHOD
3
4 Parameter
Method Method Method Proposed
5 A [23] B [12] C [17] method
6 Accuracy (%) 67.35 72.86 87.25 97.56
7
8 Online capability Yes Yes No Yes
9 Detectability of
10 lowest severity 4 4 5 3
(a)
11 faults (SC turns%)
12 Required average
13 time to operate 31 34 26 16
(ms)
14
Discrimination
15 capability of non- No No No Yes
16 faults
17 Requirement of
18 additional sensors Yes No No No
19 (b)’ or hardware
20 Computational
Low High High Low
21 Fig. 9. Measured currents and its modal current for a typical load change. burden
22 of the BLDC motors [17]. In the proposed methodology,
23 compared to other harmonics, generation of the 3rd harmonic
24 is greater. So, 3rd harmonic in the negative frequency (–3f) is
25 considered as the fault detector criterion.
26 In the following, the proposed technique is compared with
27 the aforementioned methods based on seven criteria including
28 accuracy, online fault detection capability, detectability of
29 lowest severity faults (SC turns%), required average time for
(a)
30 fault detection, discrimination capability of faults from load
31 change, requirement of additional sensors or hardware, and
32 computational burden. The total number of these case studies
33 is more than 90.
34
In Table IV tabulates the results. It is obvious that the
35
proposed method can successfully detect the faults, while the
36
operation in other methods is disfunctional in some cases.
37
Moreover, the average time delay of the proposed scheme is
38
(b) about 16 ms which is longer than the other algorithms. The
39
proposed algorithm only needs three current sensors which are
40
more economical compared to three other methods, it is
41
capable to merge the drive and fault diagnosis system. Also,
42
the computational burden of the proposed method is
43
considerably low compared with the other methods. The other
44
criteria indicate that the proposed algorithm has high degrees
45
of superiority over other methods.
46
47 (c) IV. CONCLUSION
48
49 This paper proposed a simple and accurate technique to
50 detect the inter-turn fault of BLDC motors. The method
51 utilizes three main indices for identifying the change occurred
52 in the motor, and an auxiliary index is suggested to
53 discriminate the faulty conditions from non-faulty ones. The
54 proposed algorithm is evaluated in FE-based simulated BLDC
55 motor and experimental test bench. The results confirmed that
56 (d) the proposed method can successfully handle critical
57 Fig. 10. Indices of proposed method for a load change in test bench; (a) MBI conditions, such as load change. Also, the achieved results
index (b) VBI index (c) EBI index and (d) CBI index.
58 denoted that the algorithm can be easily implemented online,
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