Application of Self-Organizing Neural Networks to Electrical Fault Classification in Induction Motors

Electrical winding faults, namely stator short-circuits and rotor bar damage, in total constitute around 50% of all faults of induction motors (IMs) applied in variable speed drives (VSD). In particular, the short circuits of stator windings are recognized as one of the most difficult failures to detect because their detection makes sense only at the initial stage of the damage. Well-known symptoms of stator and rotor winding failures can be visible in the stator current spectra; however, the detection and classification of motor windings faults usually require the knowledge of human experts. Nowadays, artificial intelligence methods are also used in fault recognition. This paper presents the results of experimental research on the application of the stator current symptoms of the converter-fed induction motor drive to electrical fault detection and classification using Kohonen neural networks. The experimental tests of a diagnostic setup based on a virtual measurement and data pre-processing system, designed in LabView, are described. It has been shown that the developed neural detectors and classifiers based on self-organizing Kohonen maps, trained with the instantaneous symmetrical components of the stator current spectra (ISCA), enable automatic distinguishing between the stator and rotor winding faults for supplying various voltage frequencies and load torque values.