Detecting Partially Fallen-out Magnetic Slot Wedges

in AC Machines Based on Electrical Quantities only

Goran Stojčić1, Robert Magnet1, Gojko Joksimović2, Mario Vašak3, Nedjeljko Perić3,
Thomas M. Wolbank1
1
Department of Energy Systems and Electrical Drives, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
2
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Montenegro Podgorica, Montenegro
3
Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Croatia
thomas.wolbank@tuwien.ac.at

Abstract- The winding system of high voltage machines is usually percentage of iron powder in the material the wedges are
composed of pre-formed coils. To facilitate the winding fitting relatively brittle.
process stator slots are usually wide opened. These wide opened
slots are known to cause disturbances of the magnetic field During operation slot wedges are exposed to high magnetic
distribution. Thus losses are increased and machine’s efficiency and mechanical forces [2]. The acting forces are caused by
is reduced. A common way to counteract this drawback is given the fundamental-wave as well as the load profile. For
by placing magnetic slot wedges in the slots. During operation example, a high number of motor starts or reciprocating load
the wedges are exposed to high magnetic and mechanical forces. profile put additional stresses on the wedges [4]. Furthermore
As a consequence wedges can get loose and finally fall out into
the air-gap. State-of-the-art missing slot wedge detection the life limiter for the wedges is the epoxy resin. Especially
techniques deal with the drawback that the machine must be when the temperature is rising due to overload or high flux
disassembled, what is usually very time consuming. In this paper concentration the aging process of epoxy is accelerated. Thus
a method is investigated which provides the possibility of also the bonding between stator teeth and wedges is affected
detecting missing magnetic slot wedges based only on and the wedges are free to move [5]. As a result the wedges
measurement of electrical quantities and without machine
disassembling. The method is based on exploitation of machine can vibrate and start getting loose, up to finally falling out
reaction on transient voltage excitation. The resulting current into the air gap. The consequences are debris of glass mat,
response contains information on machine’s magnetic state. This resin and iron powder in the air-gap, the winding system and
information is composed of several machine asymmetries end windings area. Especially the iron powder can cause an
including the fault (missing wedge) induced asymmetry. A increased discharge activity in high voltage machines. Further
specific signal processing chain provides a distinct separation of
all asymmetry components and delivers a high sensitive fault drawbacks are higher machine temperature, higher inrush
indicator. Measurements for several fault cases are presented currents at starting and higher vibrations and noise.
and discussed. A sensitivity analysis shows the high accuracy of Up to now the most effective detection technique is the
the method and the ability to detect even partially missing slot visual inspection of the air gap area of the machine [5].
wedges. Another evidence for missing slot wedges is the existence of
I. INTRODUCTION dust and glass matting debris in the machine’s air cooling
circuit. However, a literature review has shown that all
The stator winding coils in medium and high voltage
published methods deal with the handicap of machine
machines are usually manufactured outside the machine. To
disassembling [4]. So, one or more fallen out slot wedges can
facilitate the assembling process, stator slots are thus wide
only be identified if parts of the machine are demounted. This
open. But during operation these open slots cause
procedure can be extremely time consuming and coupled with
disturbances of the magnetic air-gap field and higher
high costs due to machine size, location, and application.
harmonic components are induced. This leads to the increase
A timely detected missing slot wedges can inform about
of pulsations between stator and rotor state variables, like
the reduced machine’s performance. Thus machines stress
torque pulsations, uneven flux density and higher noise
can be reduced, efficiency can be increased, and a spreading
levels. All in all, the power factor as well as the machine’s
out of the fault can be avoided.
efficiency is reduced. Partially closing of the open slots by
This paper investigates a new method for detection of
magnetic slot wedges seems to counteract these drawbacks
missing slot wedges. The only inputs needed by the method
[1]. Magnetic wedges are used to simulate semi-closed stator
are electrical terminal quantities, thus disassembling of the
slots. The wedges act as paths for the leakage flux and reduce
machine can be avoided. This advantage is based on the
the effective slot opening.
identification of machines transient reactance identified by
The properties of the wedge material strongly influence the
current reaction to short voltage pulse excitation. The
starting behavior of the machine [2]. Investigations have
transient current reaction is mainly dominated by the transient
shown that the material must be of low conductivity and high
leakage inductance. A considerable part of the leakage flux is
permeability [3]. As an example, a material with this
the stator slot leakage. Assuming a symmetrical machine the
characteristic can be composited of 70% iron powder, 20%
leakage flux passes thru the slot wedges independent of the
glass mat and 10% epoxy resin. Due to the relative high

978-1-4673-2420-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 3867

spatial direction of the excitation pulse. Missing slot wedges stator current iS will not change significantly. Each voltage
change the slot leakage paths distinctively and thus induce an pulse can then be described using (1). Subtraction of both
asymmetry which can be detected. A special voltage pulse equations leads to a simplified coherence presented in (2).
pattern and specific signal processing of the current signal Thereby currents and voltages of the first and second voltage
provide a high sensitive fault indicator which was already pulse are denoted by the indexes I and II.
introduced in [6]. The focus of this paper is placed on a
    0  
sensitivity analysis and means to increase applicability of the
method in field. v S , I  v S , II  rS  i S , I  rS  i S , II 
The investigations were realized on an 11kW induction d iS,I d i S , II d  R, I
d  R , II
machine with a squirrel cage. As voltage pulse generator ll , t   ll , t   
d d  d
d  (2)
serves a voltage source inverter which is controlled by a 0
measurement/control system. The current measurements are
di di 
performed by the inverter-built-in current sensors. According v S , I  v S , II  ll , t   S , I  S , II 
to the test machine’s design with semi closed stator slots the  d  d  
slot wedges were specially adapted. The slot wedges are
made of the same industry standard material also used for As stated, the fundamental-wave will not change
wedges in high power field applications. significantly within the pulse duration. The stator current as
well as the back-emf can thus be assumed constant within this
II. ASYMMETRY DETECTION BY EXPLOITING THE time period. Due to the subtraction, these parts are eliminated.
TRANSIENT REACTION The voltage pulses and their spatial direction are known from
the inverter switching states. On the other side the current
In the following the excitation and signal processing steps
slope is obtained from measuring the current signal within the
for determination of a fault indicator will be described.
pulse duration. Therewith the transient leakage inductance
Parameter identification of a dynamical system is
can be calculated by a simple division.
commonly done by observing the step response. In case of an
Until now the transient leakage inductance was considered
electrical machine the excitation is realized by applying a
as a scalar. Thus the resulting current slope will always be
voltage step to the machine terminals. The reactance will thus
parallel to the excitation voltage pulse. Now, considering a
be a current slope, which can be measured and evaluated. An
real machine, the transient leakage inductance has to be
easy but effective way to realize these voltage steps is given
extended from a scalar to a spatial complex value ll,t. Thus the
by inverter switching. If the inverter state is changed from
inductance is getting dependent on the voltage pulse angular
inactive to any active state a voltage step is applied. The step
position. As a consequence the voltage pulse and current
magnitude is equal the dc link voltage and the resulting
slope phasor will no longer have the same direction.
current measurement can be done by the built-in current
The so introduced non-scalar transient leakage inductance
sensors of the inverter. Machine’s voltage step reaction can
allows considering these angular differences. It can be
be described by the well known stator equation (1) in the
divided into two parts. First one is representing the
space phasor representation.
symmetrical machine and will be denoted ‘Offset’ (lOffset) in
diS d R the following. The second portion is of complex nature and
v S  rS  i S  ll   (1) correlated to the machines asymmetries. In further description
d d
this part will be denoted as the modulated part or ‘Mod’
Basically, the current derivative diS/dτ is influenced by (lMod). The composition of the complex transient leakage
different parameters, namely the voltage step vS (with the induction is given in (3).
magnitude of the dc link voltage), the stator resistance rS, the
rotor flux λR and the leakage inductance ll. Considering, now l l ,t  lOffset  l Mod
only the first some ten µs of the current reaction the (3)
dominating voltage drop is the current derivative itself l Mod  lMod  e j 2
multiplied by the transient leakage inductance, denoted as ll,t.
In addition, also time derivative of the rotor flux (back-emf) The angle γ of the asymmetry portion gives the spatial
as well as the stator resistance voltage drop influence the position of the maximum inductance within one pole pair.
current slope. These disturbances have to be eliminated to The asymmetry has thus a period of two with respect to one
achieve a distinct identification of ll,t. electrical revolution and a fixed position with respect to the
The disturbance elimination is possible by exploiting a stator. In Fig 1 these coherences are depicted as an example
special voltage pattern. The main idea is given by applying for one missing slot wedge. The stator is assumed to have 18
two short voltage pulses (some ten µs) with different inverter slots within one pole pair and the missing slot wedges is
output states. As the pulses are subsequent, the fundamental- located at γ=60° (denoted ‘missing wedge’). The transient
wave point of operation can be considered as constant within leakage inductance is represented as red solid line. The
this duration. The back-emf as well as fundamental-wave asymmetry caused by a missing slot wedges leads to a
sinusoidal spatial modulation of the inductance. The Offset

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value is assigned to be the inductance mean value and Mod as negative magnitude of the dc link voltage UDC. The two main
a superposed modulation with period of 2γ. On the other side, pulses are denoted as pulse I and II. The current slope
the same modulation is obtained when a wedge is missing at measurement is realized within these pulses. The derivative is
angular position γ+π=240°. The Mod portion can thus obtained from the difference of two sample points within
provide information on machine’s asymmetry and is the base each pulse, in the figure indicated as ‘current sample points’
for a fault indicator. In case of no missing slot wedges the with dashed gray lines. The reason for the two shorter pulses
modulated part is not present and the inductance is only is thus to symmetrize the resulting current slope to the initial
determined by the Offset part. current value when the sequence is started. Measurements as
well as the signal processing are executed on a digital signal
processor. Due to the discrete nature of signal processing the
current derivative diS/dτ is replaced by ΔiS/Δτ. Now the
current slope difference can be calculated by diΔ = ΔiS,I/Δτ-
ΔiS,II/Δτ.

Fig 1: Spatial distribution of the transient leakage inductance within one pole
pair. Missing slot wedge assumed at γ=60°.

According to the estimation of the transient leakage

inductance in (2), also the current slope difference (diS,I/dτ-
diS,II/dτ) can be separated into two parts. When (3) is inserted
Fig 2: Voltage signal applied to one main phase direction (black) and current
into (2) and the received equation is inverted, (4) is obtained. response (red).
For shorter notation the current slope difference (diS,I/dτ-
diS,II/dτ) is denoted as diΔ and voltage difference as vΔ. The The symmetrical portion of diΔ is a disturbance when
symmetrical portion is determined by the value yOffset and examining a fault indicator and must be eliminated. In (4) it
modulated by yMod. These values are obtained from the was shown that the symmetrical portion is parallel to the
inversion as shown in (5). excitation direction of the voltage difference phasor vΔ. When
applying the voltage signal given in Fig 2 subsequent to the

d i  ,Offset  d i  ,Mod  yOffset  v   y Mod  v  (4) three main phase directions also three current slope difference
phasors diΔ are obtained. The symmetrical portion of each
phasor thus also points in one main phase direction.
Combining the three phasors by adding them together leads to
l Offset only one current difference phasor. Therewith the shares of
yOffset 
l 2
Offset l 2
Mod
the symmetrical portions leads to a zero sequence value that
(5) is eliminated. Now only one phasor is remaining that provides
lOffset j ( 2 arg( v  ))
y Mod   e the information on machine’s asymmetry. This phasor is
2
lOffset  lMod
2
denoted asymmetry phasor.
In a real machine asymmetries may not only be fault
Thus it is sufficient to monitor only the resulting current
induced. There are also some inherent asymmetries, all
slope. The symmetrical portion is pointing in the direction of
present in the asymmetry phasor. Thus for fault detection
the voltage difference phasor. The modulated part is
these asymmetries must be separated. Elimination of inherent
depending on the angular position of the maximum
asymmetries is still possible due to their distinct behavior.
inductance and on its magnitude. Therewith the modulated
Due to the focus of this paper on the induction machine with
part of the current slope difference provides information on
squirrel cage the following explanation is based on this
machine asymmetry. But before this information can be used
machine type. Nevertheless this can be adapted also to other
as a fault indicator some further signal processing steps are
machine types. Main inherent asymmetries are caused by
needed as will be the described in the next chapter.
spatial saturation and the slotting of the stator/rotor
III. FAULT INDICATOR SIGNAL PROCESSING lamination.
The saturation saliency arises from the different levels of
As was shown, the current response to a special test voltage the saturation along the flux paths of the fundamental wave.
pattern can be used to obtain information on machine Modulation period is equal twice the electrical angle and
asymmetries. Voltage pulses as shown in Fig 2 are applied to corresponds to the machine’s number of poles. The slotting
the machines terminals. This excitation signal consists of two saliency has its source in the opening of the lamination. The
shorter and two longer pulses each with the positive or

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period is dependent on the angular position of the rotor with asymmetry phasor is a complex value it is possible to detect
respect to the stator. Within one revolution of the rotor this the fault level by the magnitude and the fault position by the
asymmetry will have a period equal the number of rotor bars. angle value.
In case of an unskewed rotor with open rotor slots this The whole fault indicator estimation procedure is presented
asymmetry is usually dominant. In case of skewed rotor bars as a block diagram in Fig 3.
this asymmetry will decrease. Closed rotor slots will reduce
this modulation down to the case that it can be neglected. IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND MEASUREMENTS

A. Elimination of inherent asymmetries A. Experimental setup

In order to extract a high sensitive fault indicator the The machine under test is an 11kW induction motor with
inherent asymmetries have to be eliminated. Therefore a an unskewed rotor. The number of rotor slots is 44 and of
specific signal processing chain has to be executed which will stator slots 36, respectively. The stator has 4 poles and a full
be described in the following. pitched winding system. A voltage source inverter serves as
As a starting point, voltage pulses (as shown in Fig 2) are excitation source. The measurements are controlled by
applied to the machines terminals by inverter switching. computer system programmable under Matlab/Simulink.
Within the pulse duration current measurement provide the Stator slot wedges are made of standard wedge material
current derivative difference phasor diΔ. The excitation also used in industrial applications. The composition consists
direction sequentially changes its direction in the main phase of about 75% iron powder, 18% epoxy resin and 7% glass
directions. Therewith one asymmetry phasor can be obtained mat. With the utilization of industrial standard wedge
from three current slope differences with its offset portion material the characteristics and behavior of applications in the
eliminated. Subsequently the asymmetry phasor is saved to a field are well simulated. Geometry was specially adapted to
data storage arranged as an array. In the next step the rotor fit in the slot openings of the machine. In Fig 4 a part of a
position is changed and the asymmetry phasor estimation is standard slot wedge and an adapted slot wedge for the test
repeated. Each element of the storage array thus corresponds machine are shown. Fig 5 shows a close view of the stator
to one angular position of the rotor. The whole procedure is slots with the adapted slot wedges placed in the stator slot
repeated until the rotor has moved at least one slotting period. openings. On the left side a slot wedge is missing.
The so obtained asymmetry phasor set is now available for
spectral analysis like Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The
window size is chosen to one or a multiple of the rotor
slotting period. Thus this modulation can be clearly
identified.

Fig 4: Industrial standard magnetic slot wedge material and adapted slot
wedges.

missing slot wedge placed slot wedge

Fig 5: Close view of stator slots with specially adapted slot wedges. (one
Fig 3: Block diagram of the fault indicator estimation scheme missing slot wedge on left side)

A missing slot wedge causes a fault induced saliency which B. Measurement constraints
is considered to be fixed with the stator. In other words: the
asymmetry arising from a missing wedge does not change its The measurements were carried out with the focus of field
geometrical position with respect to the stator. The pulse applicability. Basically magnetic slot wedges are applied in
excitation as well as the current measurements is also stator high voltage machines with high power rating. The method is
fixed. This indicates that the asymmetry can be detected in a based on voltage excitation by an inverter. Full size inverter
spectral analysis as the offset of the spectrum. Thus the offset in such power and voltage regions are coupled with high costs
of the FFT directly serves as the fault indicator. As the and equipment demands. Therefore the method is investigated
with the constraint that the inverter power rating is only a

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fraction of the machine’s. All measurements were carried out Fault indicator values are presented as dot plots in the stator
on a non magnetized machine with zero flux and no load. fixed frame. The units are given as arbitrary unit (a.u.) of the
Current reactance measurement was realized by the inverter DSP inner representation. The reference value for the fault
built-in current sensors. These sensors are standard industrial indicator is denoted ‘faultless’. The measurement result for a
current sensors and have no specific demands on very high full missing wedge in phase U is denoted with ‘1 MW Ph U’.
resolution or cut-off frequency. The fault indicator moves along the real axis which is equal
In order to get a clear impression of the slot wedges the phase direction U. Thus one whole missing wedge can be
positions with respect to the excitation directions Fig 6 shows clearly identified together with its direction. The next cases
a schematic representation of a cut-out of the stator were realized by removing one wedge in phase V and phase
lamination with the winding scheme. The cut-out represents W, respectively. It has to be stressed than there is always only
120° of the stator lamination. The winding system is double one single slot wedge removed while all others are still in
layer type and coils of each phase are marked in different place. The locations of each missing wedge are shown in Fig
colors. Red represents coils of phase U, green of V and blue 6 The fault indicator shows in each case the expected
of W, respectively. The excitation direction is assumed to be behavior. Thus a missing slot wedge can be clearly identified
in direction U, indicated by the red solid phasor denoted vΔ. in each phase. All measurements were repeated 72 times to
In following investigations wedges in different slots are prove the method’s accuracy. Hence, fault indicator appears
removed to simulate missing slot wedges. Starting with one as big “dots” due to the plot representation.
whole missing wedge the fault level is decreased by removing
only parts of wedges in a slot. Missing wedges are removed at
the marked locations ‘mw-U’, ‘mw-V’ and ‘mw-W’.

Fig 7: Measurement results for one missing slot wedge in each phase.

Field examinations have shown that usually not a whole

Fig 6: Location of the slot wedges within the stator lamination.
wedge is falling out or missing but only parts of it [7]. A
reliable method should provide the possibility to detect also
C. Sensitivity analysis partially missing slot wedges. To prove the applicability of
In a first step the machine was identified in the faultless the method for such fault cases further measurements were
case. All wedges were placed in the slots. The so obtained done. Thereby one wedge was cut into four parts. Fig 4 shows
value of the fault indicator serves as a reference. Basically the examples of split wedges.
fault indicator can still have an offset value although no fault
is present. Considering a real system there are always some
inherent asymmetries present. So, also the fault indicator in
the symmetrical machine case shows a deviation from the
origin. This offset value can be caused by asymmetries in the
measurement system like different sensor transfer functions
in the three phases and evaluation electronics. However, these
disturbances can be eliminated in advance by offset
elimination. For simulation of a fault case with a single
missing slot wedge one wedge was removed in phase U and
all other wedges left in the slots (in Fig 6 indicated as ‘mw-
U’). After the measurement was finished, the missing slot
wedge was placed back and another wedge removed in phase
V (‘mw-V’). Subsequently the same was done for phase W
(‘mw-W’). The fault indicator results are depictured in Fig 7. Fig 8: Measurement results for partially missing slot wedge in phase
direction U.

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 At first all four wedge parts were placed in the slot and fraction of the power (less than 1 kW). Measurements on a
then one by one part was removed and a measurement some hundred kW machine have shown that the behavior of
executed. The faulty position was chosen in phase direction U inherent saliencies (saturation/rotor slotting) is the same as on
at position ‘mw-U’. The Fig 8 shows the fault indicator values the test machine. Hence, it can be expected that the fault
of this measurement series. The fault cases are denoted with detection properties can be applied to machine of other sizes.
‘1/4 MW’ till ‘1 MW Ph U’ for 1/4 missing wedges up to one V. CONCLUSION
full missing wedge, respectively. The method shows still a
good accuracy even if only a small part of 1/4 wedge is A method to detect missing magnetic slot wedges was
missing. investigated in this paper. An outstanding advantage of the
method is given by the possibility to identify slot wedge
D. Reduction of excitation voltage faults without the usual disassembling the machine. Hence,
high downtime periods and therewith coupled high financial
Up to now all measurements were done by a full size losses can be reduced.
inverter. The dc link voltage was adjusted to its nominal The method is based on the exploitation of the machine
value of 440V. As already mentioned before, magnetic slot response on transient voltage pulse excitation. Measurement
wedges are usually applied in high voltage machines. of the current slope provides information on the transient
Realizing a measurement device based on this method would leakages inductance. This information can be utilized to
require an inverter with very high dc link voltage and obtain a fault indicator with high sensitivity. A specific signal
currents. But this is basically linked also with high costs of processing is applied to eliminate any inherent asymmetry
the inverter. To counteract this drawback the method was also and thus to further increase detection accuracy.
tested with reduced excitation voltage magnitudes and clearly Measurements on a small machine were performed to
reduced currents with respect to rated. verify the applicability and accuracy of the method. It was
proven that even a removal of only 25% of a single slot
wedge can be accurately detected. In addition it is also
possible to identify the position of the missing wedge. A
further advantage of the method is that the inverter necessary
for the excitation can be down-sized to only a fraction of the
machines power rating.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work to this paper was supported by the European
Union in the SEE-ERA.NET PLUS framework.
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