Condition monitoring of electrical machines for extreme environments using electromagnetic stray fields

Monitoring and fault detection of the electric machine drives through the stray fields are proposed in this paper. The frequency response of the stray electromagnetic field from several combination of machines is measured through low frequency antennas and signal analyzer. The proper algorithms are developed for the identification of the components, as well as the detection of some faults and failures. These algorithms are designed based on the active performance of the components including induction, DC and synchronous machines and converter. More than 150 tests of various combinations of the components and their conditions are implemented to fulfill this identification. The results show that the propose technique enables reliable monitoring of the components. Since there is no need to dismantle the components to detect the faults in this method, it can be considered nondestructive for the extreme environments. This method can be used for the applications in which it´s impossible to access the parameters of the components for online monitoring.