Unlike fault diagnosis approaches based on the direct analysis of current and voltage signals, this paper proposes a diagnosis of induction motor faults through monitoring the variations in motor's parameters when it is subjected to an open circuit or short circuit faults. These parameters include stator and rotor resistances, self-inductances, and mutual inductance. The genetic algorithm and the trust-region method are used for the estimation process. Simulation results confirm the efficiency of both the genetic algorithm and the trust-region method in estimating the motor parameters; however, better performance in terms of estimation time is obtained when the trust-region method is adopted. The results also show the possibility of extracting fault signatures from the motor's parameter values because each type of the mentioned faults has a different impact on these parameters. Under a 10% short circuit fault condition, the mutual inductance and rotor resistance deviate by almost 10% from their original values to lower values. While the stator resistance noticeably reduces by up to 20% during the open circuit fault condition.
