Diagnosis of Rotor Asymmetries Faults in Induction Machines Using the Rectified Stator Current

Fault diagnosis of induction motors through the analysis of the stator current is increasingly being used in maintenance systems, because it is non-invasive and has low requirements of hardware and software. Nevertheless, its industrial application faces some practical limitations. In particular, the detection of fault harmonics that are very close to the fundamental component is challenging, as in large induction motors working at very low slip, because the leakage of the fundamental can hide the fault components until the damage is severe. Several methods have been proposed to alleviate this problem, although all of them increase noticeably the complexity of the diagnostic system. In this paper, a novel method is proposed, based on the analysis of the rectified motor current. It is shown that its spectrum contains the same fault harmonics as the spectrum of the original current signal, but with a much lower frequency, and free from the fundamental component leakage. Besides, the proposed method is very easy to implement, either by software, using the absolute value of the current samples, or by hardware, using a simple rectifier. The proposed approach is presented theoretically and validated experimentally with the detection of a broken bars fault of a large induction motor.