Expert System Based on Autoencoders for Detection of Broken Rotor Bars in Induction Motors Employing Start-Up and Steady-State Regimes

Induction motors are indispensable, robust, and reliable machines for industry; however, as with any machine, they are susceptible to diverse faults. Among the faults that a motor can suffer, broken rotor bars (BRBs) have become one of the most studied ones because the motor under this fault condition can continue operating with apparent normality, yet the fault severity can quickly increase and, consequently, generate the whole collapse of the motor, raising repair costs and the risk to people or other machines around it. This work proposes an expert system to detect BRB early, i.e., half-BRB, 1-BRB, and 2-BRB, from the current signal analysis by considering the following two operating regimes: start-up transient and steady-state. The method can diagnose the BRB condition by using either one regime or both regimes, where the objective is to somehow increase the reliability of the result. Regarding the proposed expert system, it consists of the application of two autoencoders, i.e., one per regime, to diagnose the BRB condition. To automatically separate the regimes of analysis and obtain the envelope of the current signal, the Hilbert transform is applied. Then, the particle swarm optimization method is implemented to compute the separation point of both regimes in the current signal. Once the signal is separated, the two autoencoders and a simple set of if-else rules are employed to automatically determine the BRB condition. The proposed expert system proved to be an effective tool, with 100% accuracy in diagnosing all BRB conditions.