Advanced Fault Detection Methods for Permanent Magnets Synchronous Machines

The trend in recent years of transport electrification has significantly increased the demand for reliability and availability of electric drives, particularly in those employing Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines (PMSM), often selected due to their high efficiency and energy density. Fault detection has been identified as one of the key aspects to cover such demand. Stator winding faults are known to be the second most common type of fault, after bearing fault. An extensive literature review has shown that, although a number of methods has been proposed to address this type of fault, no tool of general application, capable of dealing effectively with fault detection under transient conditions unrelated to the fault, has been proposed up to date. This thesis has made contributions to modelling, real-time emulation and stator winding fault detection of PMSM. Fault detection has been carried out through model-based and signal-based methods with a specific aim at operation during transient conditions. Furthermore, fault classification methods already available have been implemented with features computed by proposed signal-based fault detection methods. The main conclusion drawn from this thesis is that model-based fault detection methods, particularly those based on residuals, appear to be better suited for transient conditions analysis, as opposed to signal-based fault detection methods. However, it is expected that a combination of the two (model/signal) would yield the best results.