Fault diagnosis of induction motor cooling system using infrared thermography

In the present industrial world, induction motors are mainly used as prime movers. Its failure not only effect process downtime but also leads to production loss. Therefore, its condition monitoring is essential as it increases its efficiency and availability. However, there are certain failures that are still left undetected by commonly used vibration and current based condition monitoring techniques. One of these types of failures is failure of the cooling system. This leads to increase in motor surface temperature and later can lead to failure of winding insulation. Therefore, thermal analysis is essential to monitor the changes occurred on the motor surface. This paper focuses on detection of cooling system failure using infrared thermography technique under load and no load operating condition.