Diagnosis of rotor faults in brushless DC (BLDC) motors operating under non-stationary conditions using windowed Fourier ridges

There are several applications where the motor is operating in continuous non-stationary operating conditions. Actuators in the aerospace and transportation industries are examples of this kind of operation. Diagnostics of faults in such applications is, however, challenging. A novel method using windowed Fourier ridges is proposed in this paper for the detection of rotor faults in BLDC motors operating under continuous non-stationarity. Experimental results are presented to validate the concept and depict the ability of the proposed algorithm to track and identify rotor faults. The proposed algorithm is simple and can be implemented in real-time without much computational burden.