Fault diagnosis of electrical machines - A review

Recently, research has picked up a fervent pace in the area of fault diagnosis of electrical machines. Like adjustable speed drives, fault prognosis has become almost indispensable. The manufacturers of these drives are now keen to include diagnostic features in the software to decrease machine down time and improve salability. Prodigious improvement in signal processing hardware and software has made this possible. Primarily, these techniques depend upon locating specific harmonic components in the line current, also known as motor current signal analysis (MCSA). These harmonic components are usually different for different types of faults. However with multiple faults or different varieties of drive schemes, MCSA can become an onerous task as different types of faults and time harmonics may end up generating similar signatures. Thus other signals such as speed, torque, noise, vibration etc., are also explored for their frequency contents. Sometimes, altogether different techniques such as thermal measurements, chemical analysis, etc., are also employed to find out the nature and the degree of the fault. It is indeed evident that this area is vast in scope. Hence, keeping in mind the need for future research, a review paper describing the different types of fault and the signatures they generate and their diagnostics' schemes, will not be entirely out of place. In particular, such a review helps to avoid repetition of past work and gives a bird's eye-view to a new researcher in this area.