New Method for Spectral Leakage Reduction in the FFT of Stator Currents: Application to the Diagnosis of Bar Breakages in Cage Motors Working at Very Low Slip

Motor current signature analysis has become a widespread fault diagnosis technique for induction machines (IMs), because it is noninvasive and requires low resources of hardware (a current sensor) and software (a fast Fourier transform). Nevertheless, its industrial application faces practical problems. One of its most challenging scenarios is the detection of broken bars in IMs working at very low slip, like large machines with a very small rated slip, or unloaded induction motors in off-line tests. In these cases, the leakage of the main supply component can hide the fault harmonics, even with a severe fault. Diverse solutions to this problem have been proposed, such as the use of smoothing windows, advanced spectral estimators, or the removal of the supply component. Nevertheless, these methods modify the spectral content of the current signal or add a high computational burden. In this work, a new approach is proposed, based on the analysis of the current with a very fine spectrum, obtained via simple zero padding, followed by the extraction of a practically leakage-free conventional, coarse spectrum. The method is experimentally validated by the diagnosis of a broken bar fault in a 3.15-MW induction motor.