Stator Current-Based Locomotive Traction Motor Bearing Fault Detection

Rolling-element bearings are critical components in locomotive traction motors. A reliable online bearing fault-diagnostic technique is critically needed to prevent motor systems performance degradation and malfunction. Motor bearing failure induces vibration, resulting in the modulation of the stator current. Compared with conventional monitoring techniques such as vibration monitoring or temperature monitoring, stator current-based monitoring offers significant economic benefits and implementation advantages. In this paper, a novel approach to locomotive traction motor current signature analysis based on wavelet packet decomposition (WPD) of stator current is presented. The effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method is verified by locomotive running tests.

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