Recently, research has picked up a fervent pace in the area of fault diagnosis of electrical machines. The manufacturers and users of these drives are now keen to include diagnostic features in the software to improve salability and reliability. Apart from locating specific harmonic components in the line current (popularly known as motor current signature analysis), other signals, such as speed, torque, noise, vibration etc., are also explored for their frequency contents. Sometimes, altogether different techniques, such as thermal measurements, chemical analysis, etc., are also employed to find out the nature and the degree of the fault. In addition, human involvement in the actual fault detection decision making is slowly being replaced by automated tools, such as expert systems, neural networks, fuzzy-logic-based systems; to name a few. It is indeed evident that this area is vast in scope. Hence, keeping in mind the need for future research, a review paper describing different types of faults and the signatures they generate and their diagnostics' schemes will not be entirely out of place. In particular, such a review helps to avoid repetition of past work and gives a bird's eye view to a new researcher in this area.

Bidirectional dual-bridge dc/dc converter with high frequency isolation is gaining more attentions in renewable energy system due to small size and high-power density. In this paper, a dual-bridge series resonant dc/dc converter is analyzed with two simple modified ac equivalent circuit analysis methods for both voltage source load and resistive load. In both methods, only fundamental components of voltages and currents are considered. All the switches may work in either zero-voltage-switching or zero-current-switching for a wide variation of voltage gain, which is important in renewable energy generation. It is also shown in the second method that the load side circuit could be represented with an equivalent impedance. The polarity of cosine value of this equivalent impedance angle reveals the power flow direction. The analysis is verified with computer simulation results. Experimental data based on a 200 W prototype circuit is included for validation purpose.

In this letter, two different phase-shift modulation used for the transient response of a dual-active-bridge dc/dc converter and their effects on the dynamics of the converter are discussed and compared. It is found that the settling time for both cases depends on the value of the equivalent series resistance of the power inductor. To minimize the transient time, a modified asymmetric double-side modulation is proposed, which enables the converter to transfer smoothly from one steady state to another one regardless of the equivalent series resistance of the power inductor. Experimental results of the dynamics of the converter using different transient modulation techniques are also included for the purpose of validation.

Fault diagnosis is gaining more attention for electric machines running critical loads, whose sudden breakdown can result in unpredictable revenue losses. Consequently, the motor drive systems with fault diagnostic and prediction features are of great concern and are becoming almost indispensable. Among all kinds of common faults, quite a few have relationship with unequal air gap. So far, work on detection of eccentricity-related faults in induction and synchronous machines has been well documented. However, a few are reported on faults resulting from axial nonuniform air gap. This paper investigates the performance of a three-phase induction machine with nonuniform static eccentricity (SE) along axial direction or inclined SE. A variant of modified winding function approach is applied to study this fault. The relationship between the number of rotor bars and poles, and the existence of fault-related current harmonics is discussed. It is shown that inclined eccentricity also demonstrates similar characteristics such as circumferential nonuniform air gap (SE). More importantly, it has been proved conclusively that inclined eccentricity symmetric to the midpoint of the machine shaft cannot be recognized from the current spectrum and would therefore require some other form of detection. Finite-element results to verify the inductance values used in simulation are also presented. The analysis is supplemented by the stator current spectra obtained from simulated results for different load and fault conditions. Finally, a four-pole 45-rotor-bar 2-kW induction motor is used to validate the theoretical and simulation results experimentally. Both current as well as vibration spectra are presented

Since that high-frequency isolated resonant converters are featured with low switching losses due to wide soft-switching operation range, to minimize the resonant tank current is able to enhance the overall system efficiency and reduce the component stresses as well. In this work, a bidirectional series resonant converter under phase-shifted modulation combined with a modified pulse-width modulation gating scheme is addressed. The modified pulse-width modulation gating scheme is helpful to keep more switches operating in zero-voltage switching at light load. According to the steady-state analysis with fundamental-harmonic approximation approach, a specified control strategy with minimum rms tank current based on three control dimensions is proposed in closed form. The validity of the proposed control strategy is verified through experimental tests. Compared with existing control strategies for minimum current operation, the proposed control strategy demonstrates comparable performance in depressing conduction loss and wider soft-switching range as well so that it is able to achieve high efficiency especially at light load.

In this article, a novel axial flux double-stator switched reluctance motor (AFDSSRM) is presented and optimized for electric vehicle applications. AFDSSRM adopts the axial arrangement of double-stator and inner rotor structure with a full-pitch winding configuration. The flux generated by the two stators cancels each other at the unaligned position, and then, a low unaligned inductance barely affected by saturation is achieved, which is the primary advantage of the AFDSSRM. First, the topology and power equation of the motor are presented briefly. Due to a large number of dimensional parameters of the proposed structure, comprehensive sensitivity analysis is used to classify the design parameters into strong- and weak-sensitive classes, and a multilayer optimization approach is adopted for the variables of both classes. The response surface method combined with the multiobjective genetic algorithm is employed to optimize the strong-sensitive variables, while the Taguchi algorithm is applied to optimize the weak-sensitive variables. Moreover, the 3-D finite element model is established to analyze the electromagnetic characteristics of the motor. Finally, a prototype motor is manufactured, and the experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed structure and the optimization method.