Integrated Diagnostics of AC Machines with Time-Shared Embedded Digital Control System for Aircraft Applications

Previous art of AC machine's diagnostics is based on dedicated hardware circuits to collect and process the machine's state variables. This often triggers penalties of increased cost, weight and size. This paper presents an integrated diagnostics approach using embedded digital control hardware that has already existed in the system. This integrated digital system scheme is based on a popular low-cost DSP of TMS320F240X. Diagnostics and health monitoring of the stator winding problems of a BLDC machine for an EMA is detailed. Practical system implementation is carried out and experimental results verify the design.