Non-Invasive Method for In-Service Induction Motor Efficiency Estimation Based on Sound Acquisition

Induction motors (IMs) are present in practically all production processes and account for two-thirds of the energy consumption in industrial settings. Therefore, monitoring them is essential to prevent accidents, optimize production, and increase energy efficiency. Monitoring methods found in the literature require a certain level of invasiveness, causing some applications to be unfeasible. In the present study, a new completely non-invasive method implemented in an embedded system performs the embedded processing of the sound signal emitted by an in-service IM to estimate speed, torque, and efficiency. Motor speed is estimated from the analysis in the frequency domain using the Fourier Transform. Torque and efficiency are estimated from the speed and motor nameplate information. To perform the tests and validate the proposed method/system, a workbench with a controllable torque was used. The workbench was also equipped to allow the results to be compared with the airgap torque method. The results indicate a high accuracy for the nominal load (error of approximately 1%) in the measurement of the efficiency and torque, and a mean relative error of 0.2% for the speed.