Ride-through capability of three-phase induction motor through a new winding strategy

About 40% of all reported induction machine faults are stator winding related. In critical applications where continuous operation of the machine is required, the faults pose a major challenge leading to stalling of the industrial operations. In this paper, a new winding configuration for the stator windings is proposed to have a better ride-through capability of the induction motor. This improvises the fault tolerance capability in such a way that two sets of stator windings, inner and outer windings, are used instead of single conventional winding. When both the windings are energized, the same torque-speed characteristic as in the conventional winding is achieved. The inner winding has marginally higher average torque than the outer winding because the inner winding is placed proximal to the air gap between stator and rotor. The fault tolerance capacity of the proposed configuration is investigated by inducing a fault situation on the inner winding. The outer winding considerably recovers the average torque of a faulty inner winding with a loss of 2% in operations.