A Smart Monitoring System for Rotor Bar Fault Detection in Induction Motors

Reliable induction motor (IM) fault detection techniques are very useful in industries to diagnose IM defects and improve operational performance. A smart sensor-based empirical mode decomposition (EMD) technology is proposed in this paper for rotor bar fault detection in IMs. A smart current sensor system is developed for wireless data acquisition, allowing for low-cost, low space footprint, and non-invasive installation. The characteristic fault frequency will change with the variation of load/speed/fault severity. The basis of this EMD technique is lying on the correlation of fault features over different frequency bands and intrinsic mode functions, especially under light load conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed EMD technique is verified by experimental tests.