Condition monitoring of bearing faults using the stator current and shrinkage methods

Producción CientíficaCondition monitoring of bearings is an open issue. The use of the stator current to monitor induction motors has been validated as a very advantageous and practical way to detect several types of faults. Nevertheless, for bearing faults, the use of vibrations or sound generally offers better results in the accuracy of the detection, although with some disadvantages related to the sensors used for monitoring. To improve the performance of bearing monitoring, it is proposed to take advantage of more information available in the current spectra, beyond the usually employed, incorporating the amplitude of a significant number of sidebands around the first eleven harmonics, growing exponentially the number of fault signatures. This is especially interesting for inverter-fed motors. But, in turn, this leads to the problem of overfitting when applying a classifier to perform the fault diagnosis. To overcome this problem, and still exploit all the useful information available in the spectra, it is proposed to use shrinkage methods, which have been lately proposed in machine learning to solve the overfitting issue when the problem has many more variables than examples to classify. A case study with a motor is shown to prove the validity of the proposal.CAPES (process BEX552269/2011-5

Mutual information and meta-heuristic classifiers applied to bearing fault diagnosis in three-phase induction motors

Producción CientíficaThree-phase induction motors are extensively used in industrial processes due to their robustness, adaptability to different operating conditions, and low operation and maintenance costs. Induction motor fault diagnosis has received special attention from industry since it can reduce process losses and ensure the reliable operation of industrial systems. Therefore, this paper presents a study on the use of meta-heuristic tools in the diagnosis of bearing failures in induction motors. The extraction of the fault characteristics is performed based on mutual information measurements between the stator current signals in the time domain. Then, the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is used to select the relevant mutual information values and optimize the pattern classifier input data. To evaluate the classification accuracy under various levels of failure severity, the performance of two different pattern classifiers was compared: The C4.5 decision tree and the multi-layer artificial perceptron neural networks. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach.Consejo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico - (processes 474290/2008-5, 473576/2011-2, 552269/2011-5, 201902/2015-0 and 405228/2016-3

Estimation of bearing fault severity in line-connected and inverter-fed three-phase induction motors

Producción CientíficaThis paper addresses a comprehensive evaluation of a bearing fault evolution and its consequent prediction concerning the remaining useful life. The proper prediction of bearing faults in their early stage is a crucial factor for predictive maintenance and mainly for the production management schedule. The detection and estimation of the progressive evolution of a bearing fault are performed by monitoring the amplitude of the current signals at the time domain. Data gathered from line-fed and inverter-fed three-phase induction motors were used to validate the proposed approach. To assess classification accuracy and fault estimation, the models described in this paper are investigated by using Artificial Neural Networks models. The paper also provides process flowcharts and classification tables to present the prognostic models used to estimate the remaining useful life of a defective bearing. Experimental results confirmed the method robustness and provide an accurate diagnosis regardless of the bearing fault stage, motor speed, load level, and type of supply.CAPES (process BEX552269/2011-5)National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (grant #474290/2008-3, #473576/2011-2, #552269/2011-5, #307220/2016-8

Time domain intelligent faults multiclassifier in inverter fed three-phase induction motors

Os motores de indução desempenham um importante papel na indústria, fato este que destaca a importância do correto diagnóstico e classificação de falhas ainda em fase inicial de sua evolução, possibilitando aumento na produtividade e, principalmente, eliminando graves danos aos processos e às máquinas. Assim, a proposta desta tese consiste em apresentar um multiclassificador inteligente para o diagnóstico de motor sem defeitos, falhas de curto-circuito nos enrolamentos do estator, falhas de rotor e falhas de rolamentos em motores de indução trifásicos acionados por diferentes modelos de inversores de frequência por meio da análise das amplitudes dos sinais de corrente de estator no domínio do tempo. Para avaliar a precisão de classificação frente aos diversos níveis de severidade das falhas, foram comparados os desempenhos de quatro técnicas distintas de aprendizado de máquina; a saber: (i) Rede Fuzzy Artmap, (ii) Rede Perceptron Multicamadas, (iii) Máquina de Vetores de Suporte e (iv) k-Vizinhos-Próximos. Resultados experimentais obtidos a partir de 13.574 ensaios experimentais são apresentados para validar o estudo considerando uma ampla faixa de frequências de operação, bem como regimes de conjugado de carga em 5 motores diferentes.Induction motors play an important role in the industry, a fact that highlights the importance of correct diagnosis and classification of faults on these machines still in early stages of their evolution, allowing increase in productivity and mainly, eliminating major damage to the processes and machines. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to present an intelligent multi-classifier for the diagnoses of healthy motor, short-circuit faults in the stator windings, rotor broken bars and bearing faults in induction motors operating with different models of frequency inverters by analyzing the amplitude of the stator current signal in the time domain. To assess the classification accuracy across the various levels of faults severity, the performances of four different learning machine techniques were compared; namely: (i) Fuzzy ARTMAP network, (ii) Multilayer Perceptron Network, (iii) Support Vector Machine and (iv) k-Nearest-Neighbor. Experimental results obtained from 13.574 experimental tests are presented to validate the study considering a wide range of operating frequencies and also load conditions using 5 different motors

Neural Classification of Rotor Faults in Three-Phase Induction Motors using Electric Current Signals in the Frequency Domain

Three-phase induction motors are widely used in different applications in the industry due to their robustness, low cost, and reliability. Untimely identification and correct diagnosis of incipient faults reduce cost and improve the maintenance management of these machines. This paper explores a new method for robust classification of rotor failures in three-phase induction motors (MITs) connected directly to the electrical network, operating in a steady-state, under unbalanced voltages and load conditions. Through an innovative methodology, an analysis of the electrical current signals from 1 hp and 2 hp motors in the frequency domain was performed. Such analysis was applied in constructing input matrices for a Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network (MLPNN) to detect faults. Furthermore, this methodology proved to be robust because the samples of the failing and healthy motors include voltage unbalance conditions in the electrical supply and a significant variation in the load applied to the motor shaft. Such load variation was used for the detection of failures of 1, 2, and 4 broken bars consecutively on the rotor and in the condition of 2 broken bars and 2 other broken bars diametrically opposite. The results were promising and were obtained using 847 real samples from an experimental bench used to construct the neural model and its respective validation

Mutual Information and Meta-Heuristic Classifiers Applied to Bearing Fault Diagnosis in Three-Phase Induction Motors

Three-phase induction motors are extensively used in industrial processes due to their robustness, adaptability to different operating conditions, and low operation and maintenance costs. Induction motor fault diagnosis has received special attention from industry since it can reduce process losses and ensure the reliable operation of industrial systems. Therefore, this paper presents a study on the use of meta-heuristic tools in the diagnosis of bearing failures in induction motors. The extraction of the fault characteristics is performed based on mutual information measurements between the stator current signals in the time domain. Then, the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is used to select the relevant mutual information values and optimize the pattern classifier input data. To evaluate the classification accuracy under various levels of failure severity, the performance of two different pattern classifiers was compared: The C4.5 decision tree and the multi-layer artificial perceptron neural networks. The experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach