Eccentricity fault diagnosis in a permanent magnet synchronous motor under nonstationary speed conditions

Electric motor faults decrease production capacity and increase maintenance costs. Today, predictive detection based on real-time monitoring and fault detection is taking the place of periodic applications. In this study, a new method is presented for the detection of eccentricity faults in permanent magnet synchronous motors. The motor current and the rotor speed were monitored under stationary and nonstationary speed and different load conditions, after which the fault detection was carried out via angular domain-order tracking method. The obtained results were compared with traditional fast Fourier transform results. It was observed that the suggested method can successfully detect the fault for stationary and nonstationary signals. In addition, the position of the fault-related components are constant independent of the motor current frequency, speed, and load levels.