Linear Method for Diagnosis of Inter-Turn Short Circuits in 3-Phase Induction Motors

When a turn-to-turn short fault occurs in an induction motor, it will be accompanied by vibration and heating, which will have adverse effects on the entire power system. Thus, turn-to-turn short fault diagnosis of the stator is required, and major accidents can be prevented if an inter-turn short circuit (ITSC), which is the early stage of a turn-to-turn short, can be detected. This study reinterprets Park’s vector approach using Direct-Quadrature(D-Q) transformation for the linear separation of ITSCs and proposes an ITSC diagnosis method by defining the magnetic flux linkage pulsation and current change in the event of a turn-to-turn short. It is difficult to diagnose because the turn-to-turn short current change in an ITSC is considerably different from the induction motor loss. Hence, it was found through analysis that when the current change is considered through an analysis of the relationship between inductance and the winding number, the ITSC current becomes slightly smaller than the steady-state current. This was verified using the D-Q synchronous reference frame over time. We proposed a linear separation of the ITSC diagnosis from the steady state by considering the minimum values of the pulsating current as feature points.