Thermographic technique as a complement for MCSA in induction motor fault detection

Abstract

Recently, mechanical condition monitoring in induction motors has become an important research area because of its relevance in different industrial applications. Infrared thermography has been considered for improving the monitoring of induction motors with the advantage of being a non-invasive technique and having a wide range of analysis. In this work, infrared thermography is used as complementary tool for motor current signature analysis (MCSA) under three common mechanical faults: bearing defects, unbalanced mass and misalignment, based on thermographic image segmentation and statistical feature extraction under the segments of interest. Results show the overall performance of the proposed technique as a complement in induction motor monitoring of mechanical faults.