Fault Detection of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines: An Overview

Nowadays, as the application of permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) and drive systems becomes popular, the reliability issue of PMSMs gains more and more attention. To improve the reliability of PMSMs, fault detection is one of the practical techniques, which enables early interference and mitigation to the faults, and subsequently reduce the impact of the faults. In this paper, the state-of-art fault detection methods of PMSMs are systematically reviewed. Three typical faults, i.e., the inter-turn short-circuit fault, the PM partial demagnetization fault, and the eccentricity fault are included. The existing methods are firstly classified into signal-, model-, and data-based methods, while the focus of this paper is laid on the signal sources and the signatures utilized in these methods. Based on this perspective, this paper intends to provide a new insight into the inherent commonalities and differences among these detection methods, and thus, inspire further innovation. Furthermore, comparison is conducted between methods based on different signatures. Finally, some issues in existing methods are discussed, and the future work is highlighted.