Agile accelerated aging and degradation characterization of a V/F controlled Induction Motor

Although induction machines are reliable, they are subjected to some failures; the understanding degradation behaviour of Induction Motors (IM) is crucial for the adoption and application of health management methodologies on systems and industrial processes. Conveyor belt systems are subjects to speed changes along the working route and a big amount of start-stops cycles, this operating service causes on the IM a fatigue and deterioration for thermal and mechanical stresses. Consequently this paper presents a conveyor belt moved through and IM test bed, the software and hardware (National Instruments) development procedure is depicted, where the system is monitored performing a hybrid automaton, combining the continuous and discrete acquired system data, the main features are extracted and accelerated aging test results are presented. The degradation IM behaviour under thermal and thermomechanical stress is presented and the skin effect is observed.