Article

Journal of Vibration and Control

18(11) 1585–1594

Application of high-resolution spectral ! The Author(s) 2011

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analysis for identifying faults in induction DOI: 10.1177/1077546311422925
jvc.sagepub.com
motors by means of sound

Arturo Garcia-Perez1, Rene J Romero-Troncoso1,

Eduardo Cabal-Yepez1, Roque A Osornio-Rios2
and Jose A Lucio-Martinez1

Abstract
Induction motors are critical components for most industries. Induction motor failures may yield an unexpected inter-
ruption at the industry plant. Several conventional vibration and current analysis techniques exist by which certain faults
in rotating machinery can be identified. Ever since the first motor was built, plant personnel have listened to the noises
emanating from machines; with enough experience, a listener may make a fairly accurate estimate of the condition of a
machine. Although there are several works that deal with vibration and current analysis for monitoring and detection of
faults in induction motors, the analysis of sound signals has not been sufficiently explored as an alternative non-invasive
monitoring technique. The contribution of this investigation is the development of a condition monitoring strategy than
can make a reliable assessment of the presence of specific fault condition in an induction motor with a single fault present
through the analysis of a sound signal. The proposed methodology is based on the multiple-signal classification algorithm
for high-resolution spectral analysis. Results show that the proposed methodology of sound analysis could improve
standard techniques for induction motor fault detection, enhancing detectability.

Keywords
Fault detection, induction motor, sound, spectral analysis, vibration
Received: 15 October 2010; accepted: 27 July 2011

1. Introduction stator, the rotor, and the bearings (Benbouzid, 2000).

Induction motors are widely used and they are consid-
ered critical components for electric utilities and pro-
cess industries (Siyambalapitiya and McLaren, 1990).
An induction motor failure may yield an unexpected
interruption at the industry plant, with consequences
in costs, product quality, and safety. These faults may
be inherent in the machine itself or in operating condi-
tions. The origins of inherent faults are due to the
mechanical or electrical forces acting on the machine.
The greatest challenge in the area of condition moni-
toring is the diagnosis of a fault before it becomes crit-
ical and an early detection of this allows for the repair
of the fault. In general, condition-monitoring schemes
have been widely used to sense specific failure modes in
one of three main induction motor components: the
Traditionally, the condition monitoring of induction
machines has been divided into two areas: mechanical
problems and electrical problems (Al Kazzaz and
Singh, 2003). Mechanical problems include bearing
wear, rotor unbalance, and airgap distortion.
1
HSPdigital – CA Telematica, DICIS, Universidad de Guanajuato,
Salamanca, Gto., Mexico
2
HSPdigital – CA Mecatronica, Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad
Autonoma de Queretaro, San Juan del Rio, Qro., Mexico
Corresponding author:
RJ Romero-Troncoso, HSPdigital – CA Telematica, DICIS, Universidad de
Guanajuato, Carr. Salamanca-Valle km 3.5þ1.8, Palo Blanco, 36700
Salamanca, Gto., Mexico
Email: troncoso@hspdigital.org

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1586
Electrical problems include broken rotor bars and
winding insulation breakdown. Typically, accelerome-
ters are used to measure mechanical vibrations for the
detection of mechanical faults, and current probes are
used to monitor electrically related problems before
catastrophic failures in a component occur. Almost
40% to 50% of all failures are bearing related,
around 5% to 10% are rotor faults, and unbalance
faults are within the 12% of other faults. Vibration
and current analysis have long been used for the detec-
tion and identification of machine fault conditions. The
specific characteristics of the vibration and current
spectra that are associated with common fault condi-
tions are well known. For instance, the ball pass outer
raceway frequency (fBPOF) is the spectral component of
the ball pass outer raceway, reflecting bearing defects;
the peak at the rotational frequency in the vibration
spectrum, indicating the degree of unbalance; and the
slip frequency sidebands around the fundamental fre-
quency, indicating broken rotor bars.The presence of
these deteriorating fault conditions determines when a
machine should be taken out of operation.
Many different techniques have been proposed for
the surveillance and diagnosis of the rotating machin-
ery in the literature, some of them are focused in vibra-
tion analysis; for example, Contreras-Medina et al.
(2010) present an FPGA-based multiple channel vibra-
tion analyzer for detection of broken rotor bars, unbal-
ance and looseness. Garcia-Perez et al. (2011) make the
detection of broken rotor bars, unbalance and bearing
faults using high frequency resolution using the multi-
ple-signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm. Rangel-
Magdaleno et al. (2010) present a vibration analyzer
for continuous CNC machinery monitoring with
fused fast Fourier transform-discrete wavelet transform
(FFT-DWT). Patel and Darpe (2009) present a vibra-
tion signature analysis of rotor with rotor-stator rub,
transverse fatigue crack and unbalance. Babu and
Sekhar (2008) make the detection of two cracks in a
rotor-bearing system using amplitude deviation curve
technique. Jun and Gadala (2008) present the analysis
of dynamic behavior of a cracked rotor. Yan and Gao
(2009) present a filter construction technique for
enhanced defect identification in rotary machine sys-
tems. Jalan and Mohanty (2009) present a model
based technique for fault diagnosis of rotor-bearing
systems for misalignment and unbalance. Liu et al.
(2010) present a diagnostic scheme for bearing fault
diagnostics using neurofuzzy classifier. Yan and Gao
(2010) present an energy based approach to detect bear-
ing defects in rotary machines. Other techniques are
focused in current analysis; for example, Ordaz-
Moreno et al. (2008) present the detection of broken
rotor bars on induction motors based on the DWT
application during the start-up current transient.
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Journal of Vibration and Control 18(11)
Sadeghian et al. (2009) present an algorithm for
online detection of rotor bar breakage through the
use of wavelets and neural networks. Chen and
Zivanovic (2010) make the estimation of frequency
components in a stator current for the detection of
broken rotor bars in induction machines. Zarei and
Poshtan (2009) present a bearing fault detection using
a wavelet packet transform of the induction motor
stator current. Teotrakool at al. (2009) present the
application of motor current signature analysis using
wavelet packet decomposition to detect bearing faults.
Eren and Devaney (2004) present a method for detect-
ing a motor bearing fault using wavelets. Kau and
Ngan (2010) present the detection of a motor bearing
outer raceway defect using wavelets. Pineda-Sanchez
et al. (2010) presents a diagnosis of broken rotor bars
using the fractional Fourier domain. However, other
techniques are focused in current and vibration analy-
sis; for example, Rangel-Magdaleno et al. (2009) pre-
sent a methodology for on-line half broken rotor bars,
which combines current and vibrations analysis by cor-
relating the signal spectra. Kar and Mohanty (2008)
present an experimental investigation of fault diagnosis
in a multistage gearbox under transient loads using
vibration and current signals. Bellini et al. (2006) pre-
sent a multi-variable monitoring system for on-line
monitoring of induction motors using vibrations, cur-
rent and stray flux signals. Hao and Chu (2009) present
a scheme with morphological undecimated wavelet
decomposition, where the noise produced from a roll-
ing element bearing defect is analyzed for fault diagnos-
tics. Wang and Chang (2005) present an application of
the MUSIC algorithm applied to the identification of
the number and localization of acoustic sources.
Sarradj (2010) presents an application of the MUSIC
algorithm applied to phased microphone array for cor-
rect quantitative estimation of acoustic source spectra.
Nagata et al. (2009) present an application of MUSIC
applied to the problem of direction-of-arrival estima-
tion both azimuthal and elevation form binaural sound.
Ever since the first motor was built, plant personnel
have listened to the noises emanating from machines;
with enough experience, a listener may make a fairly
accurate estimate of the condition of a machine. At
best, this is merely a qualitative analysis; at worst it
may give an entirely wrong assessment. Meanwhile,
very few works deal with sound signals for the diagno-
sis and identification of faults on induction motor sys-
tems. Wu and Liao (2010) present a neural network
system for automotive air-conditioner blower fault
diagnosis using noise emission signal. Tinta et al.
(2005) present a technique that provide reliable esti-
mate of fault diagnosis of vacuum cleaner motors.
Wang et al. (2005) present a numerical simulation for
predicting the sound power from an inverter-driven
Garcia-Perez et al.
induction motor. The analysis of machine noise begins
with an understanding of the possible causes of the
noise. In an induction motor, these include: slot har-
monics, supply harmonics, rotor unbalance, winding
asymmetry and the bearings. Some of these are inherent
in the design of the machine and hence should remain
constant over its lifetime (slot harmonics, winding
asymmetry). Some develop over time, and may lead
ultimately to machine failure (bearing, unbalance,
broken rotor bars). Others are due to external circum-
stances (supply harmonics). All of these add to the
sound emitted by a machine, resulting in a very com-
plex audio signal. This work investigates a method that
may be used to measure and analyze the sound of an
induction machine, where the feasibility of distinguish-
ing between broken rotor bars, bearing and unbalance
defects are the objectives of this investigation.
The contribution of this investigation is the study
for developing a condition monitoring strategy than
can make a reliable assessment of the presence of a
specific fault condition in an induction motor with a
single fault present through the analysis of a sound
signal. Combined with vibration analysis, it is
believed that a more accurate diagnostic system
can be designed. Yet, the sound signal analysis by
itself has shown excellent results in the identification
of bearing, unbalance and broken rotor bar faults in
an induction motor.
The proposed method uses a high-resolution spectral
analysis based on the MUSIC algorithm, which is
applied to the sound signal produced by an induction
motor for identification of the frequency related fault.
In this research, three different faults in an induction
motor such as broken rotor bars, unbalance, and bear-
ings are investigated in an experimental way. Also, the
MUSIC algorithm is applied to the vibrations signals
for validating results, obtained from the sound analysis.
Results show the potentiality of the methodology as a
deterministic detection technique that is suited for the
detection of broken rotor bars, bearing and unbalance
faults in induction motors.
2. Fault-related components
Three different induction motor faults are considered in
the paper: unbalance, bearing and broken rotor bars.
2.1. Unbalance
The number of poles determines the speed of an induc-
tion motor and the speed of the motor can be identified
by a peak in the spectrum and then monitored at
changes in amplitude. A properly balanced and aligned
motor has a frequency peak related to its speed that is
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1587
barely visible. If a motor is out of balance or misa-
ligned, the signature of unbalance is a vibration
signal, which normally has the form of an increased
amplitude along the rotating frequency and its har-
monics (Bloch, 1999). Vibration analysis can provide
a quick and relatively easy way to extract information
that may relate the unbalance fault in an induction
motor.
2.2. Bearings
McFadden and Smith (1985) give a review of the causes
and expected frequencies of vibration due to rolling
element bearings. From the geometry of the bearing,
various theoretical frequencies can be calculated such
as the inner and outer race element pass frequencies,
cage rotational frequency and rolling element spin fre-
quency. A defect on the outer race will cause an impulse
each time a rolling element contacts the defect. The
rotor speed (fr) is the frequency at which the inner race-
way rotates, that must be the frequency of the shaft.
The theoretical vibration frequency of the ball pass
outer raceway frequency (fBPOF) is easily determined as:
 
NB Db
fBPOF ¼ fr 1  cos  ð1Þ
2 Dc
where  is the contact angle between the bearing sur-
face, Dc is the cage diameter of the bearing and is mea-
sured from a ball center to the opposite ball center, Db
is the ball diameter and NB is the number of balls in the
bearing.
2.3. Broken rotor bars
An induction motor operating with a broken rotor bar
defect creates a negative sequence of rotor current due
to rotor asymmetry. It induces a principal component
in the spectrum of stator current, which rises up to the
frequency (1–2s)fs and it is close to the fundamental
frequency. Due to reflection, the rotor asymmetry fre-
quencies are 2ksfs , where k ¼ 1,2,3,. . . is any positive
integer and the s is the slip. The slip frequency (fslip) is
the difference between synchronous speed and rotor
speed. Thus, in the case of broken rotor bars, there is
a speed oscillation, which acts as a frequency modula-
tion on rotation frequency and two side band frequen-
cies appear around fr in vibration spectrum (Sadoughi
et al., 2006) and is given by
fBRB ¼ fr  2ksfS ð2Þ
where fBRB are the sideband frequencies associated with
the broken rotor bar.
1588 Journal of Vibration and Control 18(11)

is the vector of complex sinusoids, and B defines the

3. Theoretical background power of the sound or vibration space vector as:
3.1. MUSIC algorithm applied to sound  
B ¼ aaH ¼ diag I21 I22    I2P ð7Þ
or vibration space vector
The MUSIC algorithm estimates the frequencies of the Now, consider an eigen-decomposition of the corre-
complex sinusoids that best approximate a noisy signal lation matrix RiS that has only P nonzero eigenvalues,
by using an eigen-based decomposition method and is given by
(Garcia-Perez et al., 2011; Kia et al., 2007). First, con-
sider the sound or vibration signal i(t) as a sum of X
N X
P

P complex sinusoids and white noise: RiS ¼ j gj gH

j ¼ j gj gH
j ð8Þ
j¼1 j¼1

X
P
iðtÞ ¼ Ik ej ð2fk tþk Þ þ in ðtÞ ð3Þ where j and gj are the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of
k¼1 the matrix RiS , respectively. The sum of the cross prod-
ucts of the eigenvectors forms the identity matrix, and it
is possible to rewrite the autocorrelation matrix of the
where Ik , fk , and k are the amplitude, the frequency noise Rin as stated in (9).
and the phase of the k-th sound or vibration space
vector, respectively, and in ðtÞ is white noise. An X
N

N-sample vector i ¼ ½iðmÞ, iðm þ 1Þ, . . . , iðm þ N  1Þ Rin ¼ n2 I ¼ n2 gk gH
k ð9Þ
k¼1
of the noisy signal, sampled at frequency fs, can be
written as:
From (8) and (9), it is possible to rewrite the auto-
correlation matrix of the noisy signal as:
i ¼ iS þ in ¼ Sa þ in ð4Þ
X
P X
N
2
where the signal vector iS ¼ Sa is defined as: Ri ¼  k gk gH
k þ n gk gH
k
k¼1 k¼1
2 3 ð10Þ
ej2F1 m e j2F2 m  e j2FP m X
P   X
N

6 e j2F1 ðmþ1Þ 7 ¼ k þ n2 gk gH

k þ n
2
gk gH
k
6 e j2F2 ðmþ1Þ  ej2FP ðmþ1Þ 7 k¼1 k¼1þP
iS ¼ 6
6 .. .. .. .. 7
7
4 . . . . 5 The eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the correlation
e j2F1 ðmþN1Þ e j2F2 ðmþN1Þ    ej2FP ðmþN1Þ matrix Ri can be divided in two disjoint groups. The
|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}
S group of eigenvectors associated with the largest P
2 3 eigenvalues span of the signal subspace and the group
I1 ej1
6 I ej2 7 of noise with an eigenvalue given by n2 . Therefore, the
6 2 7 signals vectors can be expressed as a linear combination
6 7
6 .. 7 of the P-eigenvectors span of the signal. The MUSIC
4 . 5
pseudo-spectrum Q of the sound or vibration space
IP ejP
|fflfflfflfflfflffl{zfflfflfflfflfflffl} vector is given by:
a
ð5Þ 1
QMUSIC
i ðFÞ ¼ ð11Þ
P
N
sH ðFÞgk 2
where Fk ¼ fk =fs . The autocorrelation matrix Ri of the k¼Pþ1
noisy signal i is the sum of the autocorrelation matrices
of the signal iS and the noise in (RiS and Rin respectively) Expression (11) exhibits the peaks that are exactly at
is given by the frequencies of the principal sinusoidal components
where sHk ðFk Þgk ¼ 0:
X
P
Ri ¼ RiS þ Rin ¼ SBSH þ n2 I ¼ I2k sk sH 2
k þ n I ð6Þ
k¼1 3.2. Sound analysis
Sound signals recorded in a noisy industrial environ-
where the exponent H denotes
 Hermitian transpose, I is ment by using partial sound protection can still be uti-
the identity matrix, sH
k ¼ 1 e j2Fk
   ej2Fk ðN1Þ lized for feature extraction. Namely, the anomalies in

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Garcia-Perez et al. 1589

the spectrum of the sound signals caused by the motor

fault do not overlap with those caused by environmen-
tal noise (Benkoa et al., 2003). Li and Mechefske (2006)
present the Wigner-Ville distribution technique applied
for identification of a broken rotor bar and a combina-
tion of bearing faults using current, vibration and
acoustic methods. Various faults can be recognized
from the sound signal in harmonics related to the
faults’ frequencies, e.g. damages in bearing, unbalance
and broken rotor bars. Tinta et al. (2005) have shown
the study of a faulty motor, where the power-spectral-
density (PSD) at certain characteristic frequencies
strongly increase. Vibrations of solid structures and
mechanical contact between different surfaces of the
motor components cause mechanical noise. Vibrations
arise from unbalanced rotating parts, where these
vibrations increase at higher rotational speeds or
when a fault occurs in the induction motor. The vibra-
tional waves propagate all over the housing, thus cre-
ating reverberant vibrational fields that radiate sound.
A fault-free motor is significantly less noisy than a
faulty motor, which increases substantially the intensity
of mechanical noise in the lower range of rotational
speeds and reaches much higher values. It is expected
to find frequencies and harmonics in the spectral anal-
ysis of sound signals related to the different vibration
faults in an induction motor.

4. Experimental setup
A sound signal is captured in order to identify the
dynamic characteristics of the induction motor; and,
simultaneously, vibration signals are also acquired in
order to verify the obtained results. Forty tests were
made for sound and vibration on each condition in
order to validate the proposed methodology. Figure 1
shows the experiment setup where different three-phase
induction motors (model WEG 00136APE48T, 740
Watts) are used to test the performance of the proposed
methodology identifying the fault conditions treated in
this work. The tested motors have two poles, 28 bars
and receive a power supply of 220 VAC at 60 Hz, and
the applied mechanical load is that of an ordinary alter-
nator. The audio signal is acquired using a condenser
microphone JST model CX-509, which has a cardioid
polarization pattern. The microphone was placed in a
convenient position where the motor vibration did not
have any influence in the microphone. However, for
different microphone positions; the obtained results
show some degree of variation. On the other hand,
the vibration signal is acquired using a MEMS-based
triaxial accelerometer (model LIS3L02AS4) from
STMicroelectronics placed as shown in Figure 1(a).
From the three acceleration axes (x, y and z) of the
vibration signal, the best results were obtained with
Figure 1. (a) Test bench used during the experiment. (b) Block
diagram of the proposed multiple fault diagnosis system for
induction motors.
the signal corresponding to the x axis (AX). The
audio signal is amplified utilizing a power amp
Marshall model MG15CDR. A 12-bit 4-channel
serial-output analog to digital converter (ADC)
(ADS7841) is used for data acquisition of audio and
vibrations. The instrumentation system uses a sampling
frequency of 4 kHz for obtaining 32768 samples of
audio whereas 4096 samples are obtained at a sampling
rate of 1500 Hz from vibrations signals during the
induction motor steady state. Figure 1(b) shows the
proposed multiple fault diagnosis system for induction
motor monitoring utilizing audio signals.
Three different fault conditions are treated in this
work:
4.1. Broken rotor fault
The broken bar condition is produced artificially by
drilling two holes with 7.938 mm of diameter without
harming the rotor shaft. Figure 2(a) shows the utilized
rotor with two broken rotor bars. The motor is running
at 3,465 RPM in a 60 Hz system; the tested induction

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1590
Figure 2. Artificially generated faults (a) Two broken bar, (b) Outer race damaged bearing, (c) Unbalanced pulley.
motor has a rotor frequency fr ¼ 57.75 Hz. Thus, the
slip s is 0.0356 and the sideband frequencies associated
with the broken rotor bar are calculated by using equa-
tion (2) (Sadoughi et al., 2006), resulting in 53.5 Hz
and 62.1 Hz.
4.2. Bearing fault
To carry out the faulty bearing test, the bearing is arti-
ficially damaged by drilling two holes with 1.191 mm of
diameter on its outer race using a tungsten drill bit.
Figure 2(b) shows the artificially damaged bearing
6203-2ZNR used in this work. The vibration character-
istic defect frequency of the rolling element bearing
outer race is calculated by using equation (1) (Nagata
et al., 2009). The tested induction motor has a rotor
frequency fr ¼ 57.75 Hz and a test bearing having eight
balls of diameter 6.5 mm and the cage diameter of the
bearing of 28 mm with contact angle b ¼ 0, thus, the
ball pass outer raceway frequency defect (fBPOF) is
found to be 177.7 Hz.
4.3. Unbalance fault
The unbalance condition is present when the induction
motor mechanical load is not uniformly distributed,
taking the center of mass out of the motor shaft.
Figure 2(c) shows a pulley with an added mass used
for generating unbalance on the induction motor. The
signature of unbalance in a vibration signal normally
has the form of an increased amplitude along the rotor
frequency, being located in this case at 57.75 Hz.
5. Experiment results
The proposed sound analysis has been applied to sev-
eral cases in which a single fault (broken rotor bar,
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Journal of Vibration and Control 18(11)
bearing defect and unbalance) is present in the induc-
tion motor. In order to verify the validity of the sound
analysis, it is compared against the analysis of the
vibration signals for the studied single faults. The anal-
ysis of sound and vibration signals is implemented in
the Matlab Digital Signal Processing Toolbox. The
MUSIC algorithm has an order of 14.
5.1. Analysis of broken rotor bar fault
The broken rotor bar fault is first, identified in vibra-
tion signal with the presence of 53.5 Hz and
62.1 Hz frequency components in the spectrum as
described in section 4. Figure 3 shows the power-spec-
tral-density obtained with the MUSIC algorithm,
where the observed frequencies are very close to the
analytical frequencies for the case of two broken
rotor bars fault.
The broken rotor bar fault is also clearly identified in
the sound signal with the presence of twelfth-order har-
monics of the side band frequencies (fBRB), that are
located at 688 Hz and 694 Hz in the spectrum obtained
with MUSIC algorithm, as shown in Figure 4.
5.2. Analysis of bearing fault
The detection of a bearing defect is first identified in
vibrations signal where the ball pass outer raceway fre-
quency defect is found (fBPOF ¼ 177.7 Hz) as described
in section 4. Figure 5 shows the power-spectral-density
obtained with the MUSIC algorithm, where the identi-
fication of the bearing fault is clearly detected.
The bearing fault is also clearly identified in the
sound signal with the presence of the third-order har-
monic of the ball pass outer raceway frequency (fBPOF)
at 533 Hz in the spectrum obtained with the MUSIC
algorithm, as shown in Figure 6.
Garcia-Perez et al. 1591

Figure 3. Analysis regions of vibration signal for (a) a healthy Figure 5. Analysis regions of vibration signal for (a) a healthy
motor and (b) a motor with two broken rotor bars. motor and (b) a motor with bearing defect.

Figure 6. Analysis regions of sound signal for (a) a healthy

Figure 4. Analysis regions of sound signal for (a) a healthy motor and (b) a motor with bearing fault.
motor and (b) a motor with two broken rotor bars.

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1592
Figure 7. Analysis regions of vibration signal for (a) a healthy
motor and (b) a motor with unbalance defect.
Figure 8. Analysis regions of sound signal for (a) a healthy
motor and (b) a motor with unbalance fault.
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Journal of Vibration and Control 18(11)
Table 1. Detectability in decibels for the faults analysis
Condition FFT Wigner-Ville MUSIC
Broken rotor bar 1 5 20
Bearing defect 0 15 20
Unbalance 8 30
FFT: Fast Fourier Transform, MUSIC: Multiple-signal classification
algorithm.
5.3. Analysis of unbalance fault
The unbalance defect is verified with the increasing
value of the rotor frequency fr ¼ 57.75 Hz in the vibra-
tion spectrum as described in section 4. Figure 7 shows
the power-spectral-density obtained with the MUSIC
algorithm, where the identification of the unbalance
fault is clearly detected. This fault is clearly identified
in the sound signal spectrum with the presence of sev-
eral harmonic component frequencies (sixth, seventh,
eighth, ninth and tenth-order) located at 346.5,
404.25, 462, 520 and 577 Hz in the spectrum obtained
with the MUSIC algorithm as shown in Figure 8.
Table 1 shows the detectability comparison in dB for
the proposed methodology against the traditional FFT
and the Wigner-Ville methods (Li and Mechefske,
2006) where it is noticeable that for most cases the
detectability is improved over 20 dB in the proposed
methodology. The detectability is calculated as the
amplitude ratio (in dB) between the faulty over the
healthy condition.
6. Conclusion
This paper proposes the identification of induction
motor faults by the application of the MUSIC algo-
rithm to sound signals. It has been shown that the
power-spectral-density of sound signals for broken
rotor bars, bearing, and unbalance faults exhibit har-
monic frequencies, related to the different vibrations
faults in an induction motor. The validation of the pro-
posed technique is done through the comparison
against the analysis of vibration signal, an already
accepted methodology for induction motor fault mon-
itoring and detection. Thus, standard techniques for
induction motor fault detection can be improved with
the proposed methodology of sound analysis, enhanc-
ing detectability and also benefit from the non-invasive
nature of the sound monitoring. However, for greater
development, there is still the necessity of making fur-
ther investigations to find the best microphone position,
or to use several microphones placed in different posi-
tions and with special algorithms for noise cancellation
to consider as an option for future investigations.
Garcia-Perez et al.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding
agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
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