Induction Motor Bearing Fault Diagnosis Based on Singular Value Decomposition of the Stator Current

Among the most widespread systems in industrial plants are automated drive systems, the key and most common element of which is the induction motor. In view of challenging operating conditions of equipment, the task of fault detection based on the analysis of electrical parameters is relevant. The authors propose the identification of patterns characterizing the occurrence and development of the bearing defect by the singular analysis method as applied to the stator current signature. As a result of the decomposition, the time series of the three-phase current are represented by singular triples ordered by decreasing contribution, which are reconstructed into the form of time series for subsequent analysis using a Hankelization of matrices. Experimental studies with bearing damage imitation made it possible to establish the relationship between the changes in the contribution of the reconstructed time series and the presence of different levels of bearing defects. By using the contribution level and tracking the movement of the specific time series, it became possible to observe both the appearance of new components in the current signal and the changes in the contribution of the components corresponding to the defect to the overall structure. The authors verified the clustering results based on a visual assessment of the component matrices’ structure similarity using scattergrams and hierarchical clustering. The reconstruction of the time series from the results of the component grouping allows the use of these components for the subsequent prediction of faults development in electric motors.