Abstract:Brushless excitation system is an important part of turbine - generator unit in nuclear plants. When the rotating rectifier of brushless excitation system rotates with the rotor together,there will be some different failures because the rotating rectifier bears a strong centrifugal force,and the harmonic of armature current of different failures is different. The harmonic of armature current is analyzed theoretically aiming at three conditions,that is,exciter rotating rectifier of six phase brushless excitation system in normal operation,one arm open and one arm to be short circuit. The three - phase and six - phase brushless system are established in Matlab /Simulink for simulation analysis. Through comparing with three - phase brushless excitation system,it is concluded that the fault characteristics of six - phase brushless excitation system are similar to three - phase brushless excitation system. So the fault detection method of three - phase brushless excitation system can be used for six - phase brushless excitation system.