FPGA-Based Multiple-Channel Vibration Analyzer for Industrial Applications in Induction Motor Failure Detection

Early detection of failures in equipment is one of the most important concerns to industry. Many techniques have been developed for early failure detection in induction motors. There is the necessity of low-cost instrumentation for online multichannel measurement and analysis of vibration in the frequency domain, and this could be fixed to the machine for continuous monitoring to provide a reliable continuous diagnosis without needing trained staff. Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are distinguished by being very fast and highly reconfigurable devices, allowing the development of scalable parallel architectures for multichannel analysis without changing the internal hardware. The novelty of this work is the development of a low-cost FPGA based on a multichannel vibration analyzer; this is capable of providing an automatic diagnosis of the motor state carrying out online continuous monitoring. To test the functionality of the proposed vibration analyzer, three experiments on 746-W (1-hp) induction motors were carried out. Such experiments are intended to detect motor failures such as broken bars, unbalance, and looseness. The obtained results show the overall system performance.