SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING

PROJECTS 2006 / 2007

Title: Identification of Bridge-Rectifier Diode Failure in a Brushless Alternator



Supervisor: Dr. Tim Littler

Moderator: Dr. D.J. Morrow

Areas: Power and Machines / Digital Signal Processing


Basic Specification:

The brushless AC generator (alternator) is in general use particularly for three-phase power generation. The brush-
less alternator dispenses with direct contact slip - rings, commutators, and brushes for field excitation. The absence of
excitation brushes means that contact wear and arcing (particularly at high-altitudes, as in aircraft power systems) is
eliminated.

The brushless alternator is characterised by an integral AC field excitation system mounted on the rotor shaft adjacent
to the main field windings, Figure 1. The output stage comprises a rotating field exciting a stationary armature (stator)
that provides the alternators output power. The alternators output voltage is governed by control of the exciter field
using an automatic voltage regulator (AVR). The excitation for the rotating field comes from the rotating AC armature
(exciter) fitted to the main generator shaft. The exciter - armature AC output is rectified by shaft-mounted diodes and
fed to the main field in the machines output stage. A six-diode bridge is a common configuration for the AC rectifier.






Figure 1. Brushless alternator basic electrical schematic



The design of the exciter rectifier system must allow for a range of operating conditions, including; sudden load
change, load short-circuit, unbalanced phase loading, rectifier failure, field winding faults, and synchronism slacking or
total loss. Rectifier diodes must be chosen to take account of all conditions. A means of assessing the operating
condition of the rectifier-bridge diodes is important and, although not directly measurable, is achievable by non-invasive
monitoring of the exciter field, using a current transformer (CT).

This project will build on work developed in previous final year projects. The project will implement a real-time
technique for bridge rectifier diode failure in a brushless alternator.

The objectives of this project are to:

1. Understand the operation of the brushless alternator.
2. Acquire field excitation signals from a lab alternator for different load and fault conditions (single-diode
failure).
3. Examine abnormal excitation signals using wavelet analysis (and apply Fourier analysis to extract the failure
signature).
4. Develop real-time (rapid) detection of diode failure using a wavelet method.
5. Evaluate real-time detection using a lab-alternator under different load and fault conditions (for single diode
failure).

MEng Extensions

1. Determine the effect of multiple diode failure and methods of discriminating failure signatures from normal
load conditions.
2. Develop an algorithm to detect single and multiple diode failure under specified conditions.


As this is predominantly a software project, a student undertaking the project should be confident in the use of
computer programming languages, including C/C++ and Matlab M scripts.