Condition monitoring of speed controlled induction motors using wavelet packets and discriminant analysis

This work presents an intelligent method for the condition monitoring of induction motors supplied with adjustable speed drives (ASD). Most of the previous work in this area concentrated on the fault detection and classification of induction motors supplied directly from an a.c. line. However, ASD driven induction motors are widely used in industrial processes and therefore obtaining an intelligent tool for the condition monitoring of these motors is necessary in terms of preventive maintenance and reducing down time due to motor faults. Here 3-phase supply side current of the ASD driving an induction motor is used to extract statistical features of wavelet packet decomposition coefficients within a frequency range of interest. This way, the information regarding the output frequency of the ASD and hence the motor speed is not required. Six identical three-phase induction motors were used for the experimental verification of the proposed method. One healthy machine was used as a reference, while other five with various synthetic faults were used for condition detection and classification. Extracted features obtained from decomposition coefficients of different wavelet filter types for all motors were employed in three different and popular classifiers. The proposed method and the performance of the features used for fault detection and classification are examined at various motor loads and speed levels, and it is shown that a successful condition monitoring system for induction motors supplied with ASDs is developed. The effect of selected filter type in wavelet decomposition to the condition monitoring process is analyzed and presented.

Research highlights
► We present a method to monitor the condition of speed controlled induction motors.
► We examined statistical features of the current drawn by the speed drive.
► With the method presented prior information of motor speed is not required.
► Succesful detection and classification of various motor faults are obtained.