Comparative Study of Time-Frequency Decomposition Techniques for Fault Detection in Induction Motors Using Vibration Analysis during Startup Transient

Induction motors are critical components for most industries and the condition monitoring has become necessary to detect faults. There are several techniques for fault diagnosis of induction motors and analyzing the startup transient vibration signals is not as widely used as other techniques like motor current signature analysis. Vibration analysis gives a fault diagnosis focused on the location of spectral components associated with faults. Therefore, this paper presents a comparative study of different time-frequency analysis methodologies that can be used for detecting faults in induction motors analyzing vibration signals during the startup transient. The studied methodologies are the time-frequency distribution of Gabor (TFDG), the time-frequency Morlet scalogram (TFMS), multiple signal classification (MUSIC), and fast Fourier transform (FFT). The analyzed vibration signals are one broken rotor bar, two broken bars, unbalance, and bearing defects. The obtained results have shown the feasibility of detecting faults in induction motors using the time-frequency spectral analysis applied to vibration signals, and the proposed methodology is applicable when it does not have current signals and only has vibration signals. Also, the methodology has applications in motors that are not fed directly to the supply line, in such cases the analysis of current signals is not recommended due to poor current signal quality.