This article deals with inter-turn short-circuit fault detection in stator windings of squirrel cage induction machines. The main aim is to perform harmonic analysis of different electrical signatures namely the stator phase current, external magnetic flux and electromagnetic torque at different levels of mechanical load in order to develop an efficient fault detection approach of this kind of defect in induction machines. The proposed approach is based on the analysis of saturation related harmonics at rank 3k(1) f(s), where k(1) is an odd number, and magnetomotive force (MMF)-related harmonics at rank (6k(2) +/- 1) f(s), with k(2) = 1, 2, ... in stator phase current and stray flux and harmonics at rank 2k(2) f(s) in electromagnetic torque. The amplitudes of these last harmonics in healthy condition are compared with 3% power supply unbalance, 16.6% (40 turns) and 33% (80 turns) levels of inter-turn short-circuit fault in frequency range from 0 Hz to 2500 Hz under different levels of mechanical load. Besides, the stand-still test is also investigated in this work. Simulation study is carried out based on 2.2kW squirrel cage IM using finite element method (FEM). This method provides accurate and inexpensive tool for evaluating the performance of induction machine under healthy and faulty conditions. The obtained results demonstrate that the stray flux is the most sensitive signature to the stator winding inter-turn short-circuit fault, and it is robust against the power supply unbalance in comparison with both stator current and electromagnetic torque. (c) 2022 International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation (IMACS). Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.