Modeling and detection of eccentricity fault in Switched Reluctance Motor

This paper presents the effects of dynamic air-gap eccentricity (DE) on the performances of a 6/4 Switched Reluctance Machine (SRM) through finite Element Analysis by means of Finite Element Method Magnetics (FEMM). The Time-Frequency Representation (TFR) is carried out to study the effect of DE on the output torque signal. Time-frequency representation is an appropriate tool for detecting the mechanical failures from the torque analysis. Relatively few works study the influence of eccentricity on the dynamic response of SRM. Various time-frequency methods as Wigner-Ville distribution (WVD) and Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) are used and illustrated to fault detection. TFR method allows an accurate detection independent from the type of fault. Finally, simulation results of healthy and faulty cases are presented.