FEM Approach for Diagnosis of Induction Machines’ Non-Adjacent Broken Rotor Bars by STFT Spectrogram

Rotor electrical faults are an issue frequently encountered when applying condition monitoring and fault diagnosis on induction machines. The detection via the analysis of the stator current becomes challenging when the rotor cage suffers from multiple breakages at non-adjacent positions. In that case, electromagnetic asymmetries induced by the broken bars can be masked in such a way, that the diagnostic ability is highly likely to be obscured, thus leading to misinterpretation of the monitored signals’ signatures. A new approach is proposed in this work to overcome this problem while the motor is at steady state. In this paper an industrial 6.6kV, 1.1MW induction motor will be simulated with Finite Element Analysis and its electromagnetic variables will be analysed and studied under healthy state and several faulty conditions. The analysis of the stator current and stray flux waveforms is executed in both the transient and the steady state and aims to diagnose the challenging cases where the rotor breakages are non-consecutive with regards to their spatial location.