Automatic Fault Diagnostic System for Induction Motors under Transient Regime Optimized with Expert Systems

Induction machines (IMs) power most modern industrial processes (induction motors) and generate an increasing portion of our electricity (doubly fed induction generators). A continuous monitoring of the machine’s condition can identify faults at an early stage, and it can avoid costly, unexpected shutdowns of production processes, with economic losses well beyond the cost of the machine itself. Machine current signature analysis (MCSA), has become a prominent technique for condition-based maintenance, because, in its basic approach, it is non-invasive, requires just a current sensor, and can process the current signal using a standard fast Fourier transform (FFT). Nevertheless, the industrial application of MCSA requires well-trained maintenance personnel, able to interpret the current spectra and to avoid false diagnostics that can appear due to electrical noise in harsh industrial environments. This task faces increasing difficulties, especially when dealing with machines that work under non-stationary conditions, such as wind generators under variable wind regime, or motors fed from variable speed drives. In these cases, the resulting spectra are no longer simple one-dimensional plots in the time domain; instead, they become two-dimensional images in the joint time-frequency domain, requiring highly specialized personnel to evaluate the machine condition. To alleviate these problems, supporting the maintenance staff in their decision process, and simplifying the correct use of fault diagnosis systems, expert systems based on neural networks have been proposed for automatic fault diagnosis. However, all these systems, up to the best knowledge of the authors, operate under steady-state conditions, and are not applicable in a transient regime. To solve this problem, this paper presents an automatic system for generating optimized expert diagnostic systems for fault detection when the machine works under transient conditions. The proposed method is first theoretically introduced, and then it is applied to the experimental diagnosis of broken bars in a commercial cage induction motor.