Slot Opening Influence on Short Circuit Current: A Sensitivity Analysis

For sustainable electric drives, reliability is a key element, as a reliable design endures and sustains itself over time. In the context of electric machine design, the awareness on reliability has led to investigate various kinds of faults, with the aim of preventing them or limiting the fault-related damages. With focus on winding faults, the inter-turn short circuit proves to be the most critical. This work analyzes the behavior of an 8-pole, 12 slots dual three-phase electric motor with concentrated windings under inter-turn short circuit fault condition in one of the windings, using a finite element approach. Based on this analysis, the dependence of the short-circuit current and the motor torque with various geometric parameters, particularly the stator slot opening, was examined, thus orienting the design toward improved fault tolerance.