Current-based condition monitoring of electrical machines in safety critical applications

The paper presents a complete summary of state-of-the-art techniques for current-based fault monitoring of low voltage permanent magnet synchronous machines commonly used in safety critical applications such as hybrid vehicles and backup generators. This includes detection of stator winding faults, and bearing faults. In addition, a fault tolerant strategy is presented which can be used to operate the machine in a fault tolerant mode even in the presence of the stator turn fault. Experimental results show the efficacy of these methods which allow for use for PM machines even in automotive applications wherein the machine cannot be stopped.