This paper presents and analyzes short circuit failures for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM). The study includes stable condition and speed transients in simulation and realistic experimental conditions. The stator current is analyzed by the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method, which will generate a collection of intrinsic mode functions (IMF). Finally, the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) is used to compute the instantaneous frequencies resulting from the IMFs obtained from the stator currents. Moreover, the IMF 1 and IMF 2 have been analyzed by means of Wigner Ville distribution (WVD). Experimental laboratory results validate the analysis and demonstrate that this kind of time-frequency analysis can be applied to detect and identify short circuit failures in synchronous machines.