ROPEC 2015 - Power Systems

Evaluation of Progressive Deterioration of a Squirrel-

Cage Rotor, with a Condition Monitoring System that
Implements the SideBand Methodology

Pedro V. De Mata-Castrejón, Alejandro Villegas-Ortega, Tomás I. Asiaín-Olivares, Daniel Ruiz-Vega

Graduate Program in Electrical Engineering, SEPI-ESIME-Zacatenco
Instituto Politécnico Nacional.
Ciudad de México, México
demata01@gmail.com, avillegasortega7@gmail.com, yeriak1@yahoo.com.mx, drv_liege@yahoo.com

Abstract— The Motor Current Signature Analysis (MCSA), is
one of the most used methods to diagnose failures on squirrel
cage induction rotors. This paper presents the application of the
MSCA to the experimental test results, performed on an initially
healthy motor, which has several rotor bars progressively
fractured. The tests were applied using a monitoring condition
system, developed in LabVIEW®, designed to detect the
sidebands. The results show that the loading of the motor has an
important effect in the magnitude difference between the
fundamental harmonic, and the lower sideband.
Keywords— Induction motor, broken bars, Sidebands, digital
measurement.
I. INTRODUCTION
The history of fault diagnosis and protection is as old as the
machines themselves. As the tasks performed by these
machines became increasingly complex, and important,
improvements were also sought in the field of fault diagnosis,
and now it is very important to diagnose faults as early as
possible, at their very inception [1].
In the last 30 years, there has been a substantial amount of
research to provide new condition monitoring techniques for ac
induction motors [2]. Some of these techniques are [3], [4], [5]:
1. Motor Current Signature Analysis (MCSA).
2. Spectral analysis of the electromagnetic torque.
3. Spectral analysis of active and reactive power.
4. Spectral analysis of axial vibrations.
5. Extended Park’s vector approach.
Some of the techniques listed above imply using high cost
transducers, whose mechanical installation must be carefully
done, and also the signals measured during the tests need
special care when they are registered. Some other methods
require using detailed mathematical models, and parameters of
the machine, but they are not always available on site.
On the other hand, in this paper the MCSA technique was
selected, because current signals can easily be measured for
condition monitoring. The problem in this case is how to
extract the different features of interest from the current signal,
to be able to discriminate among various machine conditions.
The noise, together with the nonlinear behavior of the machine,
make this task very difficult [2]. Despite the above mentioned
disadvantages, the MCSA method has proved efficiency in
fault detection and diagnosis processes [6].
In this paper, a condition monitoring system based on
LAbVIEW®, was developed to apply the MCSA, to the rotors
of induction motors. The experimental test was designed to
evaluate the performance of the condition monitoring system,
in detecting a different number of broken bars, under various
motor operating conditions.
II. SIDEBANDS
A. Breakdown origins and evolution
The problems of broken bars or rings can start during the
construction of the machine, due to a defective melting or
union (depending on the type of rotor), giving rise to hot spots.
The fracture commonly starts in the vicinity of the union of the
bars with the short circuit ring, or on the ring itself, since this is
the area where mechanical stresses tend to accumulate [7].
With regard to the process of evolution of the fracture, it
should be noted that the rotor bars support the braking and
acceleration forces of the motor; therefore, if the machine
suffers sudden spin speed fluctuations, that may even be
caused by its own normal work cycle, the fault may develop
rapidly as a result of material fatigue. Also, due to thermal
transients of the motor, the cage can suffer differential
movements within the rotor magnetic package, which generally
leads to stress and cracking of the rings [7].
Once a bar or ring has been cracked, the process is
degenerative [8]:
1. The defective bar is heated around the crack until it finally
breakdown.
2. The breakdown causes the appearance of electric arcs
between the two separate parts, damaging the magnetic
circuit.
3. Due to rupture, adjacent bars carry greater currents, so that
the process of emergence of new cracks starts.

978-1-4673-7121-6/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

 ROPEC 2015 - Power Systems
Although broken rotor bars do not initially cause an
induction motor to fail, there can be serious secondary effects.
The fault mechanism can result in broken parts of the bar
hitting the end winding of a motor at high velocity [9].
B. Sidebands Frequencies
One of the most generalize and widespread methods [8] for
diagnosing induction motors’ rotor, is to track two harmonics,
called lower lateral harmonic and upper lateral harmonic,
which are located on both sides of the fundamental harmonic,
and separated from it, at frequencies given by (1) [6]:
fl = f ⋅ (1 ± 2s ) (1)
These are classic sidebands of twice the slip frequency, due
to rotor broken bars. The frequency f (1 - 2s) is called Lower
Sideband, while the frequency f (1 + 2s) is called Upper
Sideband, and their magnitudes are a function of the degree of
asymmetry presented by the rotor [10].
It is noteworthy that the amplitude of all harmonic currents
is a function of the load applied to the motor; therefore, it is
very difficult to define an amplitude for the sidebands that
could be considered a border between a healthy rotor and one
presenting asymmetries. In addition, many harmonics are
present in the current spectrum of a healthy motor, and their
amplitudes are due to its constructive characteristics, and the
machine’s non sinusoidal waveform field. Because of these
reasons, the direct use of the harmonic amplitudes for the
diagnosis of a motor does not have practical use.
To solve this problem, the measurement of the amplitudes
can be standardized, in a similar way to the per unit value that
is used in power systems. In this case, it comes to measuring
the amplitude difference between the fundamental current and
the characteristic harmonics of the failure, on a logarithmic
scale. If the amplitudes are measured on a spectrum in decibels
(dB), this difference is equivalent to a ratio between the
amplitude of the fundamental harmonic and the harmonic of
interest; it means the results will be normalized, regarding the
value of the fundamental harmonic. Thus, the influence of the
machine size is eliminated, and the results are valid for any
motor, regardless of their rated current.
By observing a large number of motors, Table I presents
the difference in dB between the amplitude of the fundamental
harmonic and the amplitude of the Lower Sideband,
corresponding to progressive increases of rotor failures [8].
TABLE I. AMPLITUDE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE LOWER SIDEBAND AND
THE FUNDAMENTAL HARMONIC, FOR VARIOUS FAILURE LEVELS [7].
Difference in
Rotor condition
dB
49 or more Healthy motor
46 to 49 A high resistance point
44 to 46 Several high resistance points
39 to 44 Many high resistance points or a broken bar
35 to 39 At least one broken bar
35 or less Several broken bars
III. CONDITION MONITORING SYSTEM
The measurement system used in this work was originally
designed and developed in LabVIEW® for the data acquisition
and monitoring of synchronous machines; nevertheless, it
offers adequate flexibility to be utilized for motor condition
monitoring. As explained in [11], the condition monitoring
system’s main target is to measure in real-time both types of
variables of interest of the machine, electrical and mechanical.
Broadly speaking, the measurement system at the hardware
level consists of potential and current transformers, as well as
an inductive proximity sensor in order to obtain the rotor
speed. For acquisition and analysis processing purposes, a
cRIO 9074 (400 MHz real-time processor and a 40 MHz
FPGA embedded in a single device) in addition with an NI-
9205 (analog input module with: 250 kS/s, 32 channels)
acquisition card were used ([12] [13]). The above mentioned
equipment gives a sufficient processing and data acquisition
capabilities to address the main targets with respect to the
present work. Regarding transformers to measure electrical
variables, it is important to mention that, because the method
used in this work, which requires analyzing only frequency
bands around the main harmonic (relative low frequencies, fs ±
2s fs), it does not require a wide bandwidth. On the other hand,
at software level, the main program that was designed for data
processing also provides a graphical user interface (GUI); this
program was implemented using the LabVIEW® 2014
Development Environment. The data processing stage
performed by the main program is explained on the next
section.
A. Data processing
For the data processing stage, the system acquires a
fixed-sized window of data through an array, which contains
all measured values obtained by the analog-digital converter;
the above is carried on by an embedded FPGA on the device.
Each time the system has a valid data window, the main
program retrieves this data to perform data processing; in this
way data losses are avoided, while data processing is
conducted. As mentioned earlier, the theory of sidebands states
that, to obtain an adequate diagnosis of rotor’s state, it is
necessary to distinguish between the first harmonic and the
upper and lower side bands. Therefore, the features of the
monitoring condition system must include: a high sampling
rate and a time window long enough to distinguish such bands.
It is important to maintain generality on the procedure
performed by the monitoring system, with the objective of
being able to perform different tests on several motors within a
broad range of capacities. Without modifying internally the
analysis module, the parameters mentioned above (sampling
rate and time window) were adjusted to obtain a resolution
frequency of 0.0954 Hz. This resolution was obtained using a
window length of 10 seconds of recorded data (a sampling
frequency of 20.4 kHz with 214000 samples, according to (4)).
The Discrete Time Fourier Transform (DTFT) is used to
analyze a continuous time periodic signal on the frequency
domain, that was previously digitized through an analog-digital
converter with a sampling frequency (fs) [14]:
N −1 2π nk
1 −j
X (k ) =
N
∑ x ( n) e
n=0
N
; n = 0,1, 2,..., N − 1 (2)
where:
 ROPEC 2015 - Power Systems

X(k) data array indicating the magnitude of each frequency The steps performed to obtain the difference between the
of the input signal [V2 rms]. sidebands and first harmonic magnitude, are shown in the flow
N number of elements in the array x(n). diagram of Fig. 1. On the flow diagram there are three
x(n) sampled input data array [V]. important stages. The first stage carries out a FFT calculation
using data obtained throughout the test. Secondly, the search
When applying expression (2), the resulting array shows and identification of maximum magnitude (sidebands and first
the signal contents, distributed among bands or frequency harmonic) are conducted, using the preliminary value of
lines; this frequency lines span from 0 Hz (the dc component) frequency, obtained in the previous step, as an approximation.
up to a maximum frequency fMAX determined by (3). On the third section, a diagnosis is determined based on the
fs fs difference between bands and on the data shown on Table I.
f MAX = − (3) The stages shown in this section are described in [16].
2 N
The frequency intervals or frequency lines are:
fs
Δf = (4)
N
where:
Δf is the interval or maximum resolution frequency
spectrum lines of the input signal [Hz].
Besides the measurement of phase currents, used for the
determination of sidebands, the measurement of voltages and
rotor position was also carried out. Although latter
measurement it is not strictly necessary to accomplish the main
target of this work, this was used to obtain rotor’s parameters
including: real, active and reactive power, and power factor.
The rotor position, obtained via the proximity induction sensor,
is used to compute rotor speed. With this value, the slip is
determined as shown in en (5) [15].
ns − n
s= ⋅ 100 (5)
ns
where:
s is the rotor slip [%].
ns is the synchronous speed of the electrical system
[rad/s] ó [rpm].
n is the motor’s speed [rad/s] ó [rpm].
The main program determines the slip through the
frequency of the signal generated by the proximity sensor. This
sensor generates a pulse on each revolution of the rotor; with Fig. 1 Flow Diagram for the implemented function
this data the frequency of such signal is determined. Once the used for sidebans detection.
motor speed and the system frequency (obtained through
current transformers signals) are known, the slip is then IV. TESTS AND RESULTS
computed by means of (5).
Laboratory tests consisted of measuring the signals of the
The slip's accuracy directly affects the reliability of the current consumed by the motor under study, as well as its
method used in this work, as it can be seen in equation (1); the speed. Through the software developed, the sinusoidal time
determination of the sidebands depends upon the slip domain current signals were transformed to their representation
measurement. For an accurate slip measurement, a function in the frequency domain. Also, the speed was used to
using lineal interpolation was implemented, in order to determine the motor slip. The difference between the
improve the slip’s accuracy. This function computes the magnitude of the fundamental harmonic, and the lower
frequency of sensor input signal, through the zero crossing sideband, was then determined at different rotor deteriorating
developed within the main program. The accuracy when conditions, for a motor running at no load, and at rated load.
determining the slip, is validated by comparing the preliminary The main characteristics of the motor tested are: power, 5 HP;
values of sidebands, with those obtained by computing the voltage, 220/440 V; current, 15.6 / 7.8 A; speed, 1723 rpm; 48
frequency spectrum; then, the relative error between them is bars in the rotor.
computed in order to assess their reliability. The computed
relative error throughout the tests performed was in the range Initial measurements were performed with the healthy rotor
of 0.0303% to 0.0025% (as detailed in [9]). without fail, for the two load conditions above mentioned
(Fig. 2a)).
 ROPEC 2015 - Power Systems
a) Healthy rotor, with no broken bars.
c) Rotor with 3 broken bars.
Fig. 2 Evolution of the breaking of rotor bars.
Resistive Load
Proximity Sensor
Bank R To the local measurement
+
Variable DC
Source
A
B
C
DC Generator Motor under test
3 Source
Fig. 3 Connection diagram for the laboratory tests.
Then, for breaking 2, 3 and 6 bars, holes were drilled in the
rotor, obtaining measurements at each step, for the same load
percentages. Figure 2 shows the evolution of the fault. In order
to vary the percentage of load, the motor under test was
coupled to a direct current generator, which feeds a bank of
variable resistors. Figure 3, shows the test connection diagram.
It is important to mention that all results presented in this
paper were obtained by the program developed in LabVIEW®,
which is responsible for the acquisition and processing of data.
Subsequently, in order to analyze the results, two conditions of
the rotor were plotted in the same image by using DIAdem®
software. In Fig. 4.a) the obtained graphs of all measurements
with the motor unloaded are shown; in Fig. 4.b), 4.c) and 4.d)
the graph obtained with 0 broken bars is compared with those
obtained with 2, 3, and 6 broken bars respectively; all these
measures were done with the motor operating at rated load.
The results of tests performed with the motor operating at
rated load, in different fault conditions, are summarized in
Table II. With regard to the values of the differences (in dB)
between the fundamental harmonic, and the lower sideband, it
b) Rotor with 2 broken bars.
d) Rotor with 6 broken bars.
Communication
to PC
system
TCs
Off
Switch 3 Source
TPs
Communication
to PC
To the local measurement
system
should be noted that the magnitude of the sidebands is
dependent on the broken rotor bars, as mentioned in [1], [17],
[18], [19]. With the values of ΔdB between the fundamental
frequency and the lower sideband (Table II) it was possible to
develop the trend chart shown in Fig. 5; in this figure the
relationship between the number of broken bars and the
difference or the fundamental with the lower sideband is
displayed.
V. ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
In the graph shown in Figure 4.a), it can be seen that when
the motor is unloaded, the sidebands method is inefficient,
since the slip is very small, which makes the frequencies
f (1±2s) be located too close to the fundamental frequency (a
more detailed explanation can be found in [16]). Therefore, it is
difficult to determine in an accurate way, the ΔdB difference
between the fundamental harmonic and the lower sideband.
The analysis of the unloaded motor armature current, during its
start transient, has been proposed in [20], [21] and [22], by
using tools in time-frequency decomposition to overcome the
problem above mentioned, when the motor load is low.
 ROPEC 2015 - Power Systems

a) Motor with no load, 0, 2, 3 and 6 broken bars. b) Motor with 100% load 0 and 2 broken bars.

c) Motor with 100% load 0 and 3 broken bars. d) Motor with 100% load 0 and 6 broken bars.
Fig. 4 Comparison of current spectra for different levels of failure.

TABLE II. RESULTS OBTAINED FROM THE TESTS WITH THE MOTOR RUNNING AT RATED LOAD

Broken Average Fundamental Frequency Lower sideband f (1 - 2s) Upper sideband f (1 + 2s)
bars slip[%] Frequency [Hz] Magnitude [dB] Frequency [Hz] Magnitude [dB] Δ dB Frequency [Hz] Magnitude [dB] Δ dB
0 4.6617 60.0506 21.9969 54.3616 -33.1053 55.1022 65.6493 -29.4759 51.4728
2 4.2956 59.9962 22.4636 54.7997 -24.9045 47.3681 65.1927 -36.7423 59.2059
3 4.9762 60.0186 22.5129 53.9888 -18.1697 40.6826 65.9555 -21.6831 44.1960
6 5.3583 60.0801 21.1073 53.5953 -6.3877 27.4950 66.4696 -11.1621 32.2694

In Figures 4.b), 4.c) and 4.d), showing the measurements
obtained with the motor operating at 100% load, the location
and magnitude of the sidebands is graphically evident, thus
facilitating the study of ΔdB. The numerical values of the
difference in decibels, between the fundamental frequency and
both sidebands, are brought together in Table II.
Taking as reference the values listed in Table I, and the
conditions that such values imply, and comparing them with
the results reported in Table II, for the lower sideband values, it
is clear that there are only two coincidences: the rotor
conditions denominated as “Healthy” and “Several broken
bars”.
The differences between both tables could be explained by
the differences between the motors used to develop them. In
reference [8], it is mentioned that motors are "fundamentally
belonging to companies in the electricity sector." On the other
hand, during this work, the authors always worked with the
same low capacity motor, only varying the number of broken
bars between one measurement and the next.
In Fig. 5, the theory relating the level of damage in the
rotor, to the magnitude difference between the fundamental
harmonic and the lower sideband is proved. Furthermore, it can
be confirmed that, as the number of broken rotor bars
increases, the value of the difference in decibels (ΔdB) between
both frequencies decreases. However, it is essential to get more
measurement points, in order to develop a more accurate graph.
Also, by testing more similar motors, it would be feasible to
develop an equation that describes the tendency of this
behavior.
 ROPEC 2015 - Power Systems
Fig. 5 Difference between the fundamental harmonic
and the lower sideband, as the number of broken bars increases.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In order to confirm the results, it is planned to make more
measurements, using the same testing methodology, in motors
with similar characteristics to the one presented here [23]. With
the new results, it would be possible to elaborate a table with
reliable levels of damage in the rotor for this type of motors.
Likewise, taking measurements at different percentages of the
motor rated load, in order to study the behavior of the ΔdB
difference, and its relationship with the percentage of load, is
being considering.
It is important to emphasize the benefits that entails the
implementation of a condition monitoring system for induction
motors. Firstly, due to the modular design of the program,
different types of signal processing, and therefore of diagnosis,
can be performed with the armature currents obtained during
the tests performed in this work. It is also possible, by
implementing enough efficient algorithms, to conduct an
online condition monitoring for one or more motors. Finally, it
is important that the programming language used in the
monitoring system is LabVIEW®, because it provides some
advantages, in terms of flexibility, which are inherent to
graphical programming using predefined functions that are
already included, and the capability of adding programs
developed in other languages as MATLAB®.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The first two authors thank the National Council for
Science and Technology (CONACYT) for the master's
scholarship, plus the resources of the research project 83701;
which were necessary to carry out the acquisition of equipment
that was implemented in this work.
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