Infrared thermography-based automatic assessment of control components for electric machines

Infrared thermography technology has become an important tool for condition monitoring of both electrical machines and electrical equipment in industry. In general, motors have received special attention as they are present in almost any industrial process. In regard to this subject many works for condition assessment focused on either the motor itself or the electrical components that control it have been published in literature. Despite obtaining promising results, some issues still remain; for instance, the need of an expert user for thermal images interpretation or, if commercial equipment is used, the limited integration of tasks different from those they are designed for. In this work, a novel methodology based on infrared thermography and image processing for automatic assessment of control components for electrical machines is presented. The proposed methodology is implemented in a low-cost open-architecture platform, which is also developed by the authors. In general, the proposal consists of a segmentation based on thresholding and mathematical morphology methods of the region of interest, i.e., the area with overheating. The electrical components considered are fuse cabinets, circuit breakers, and electric switches. The temperature variations used for thermal condition assessment follow the maintenance specifications stated in the International Electrical Testing Association. Results demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of this proposal.