Fault diagnosis of industrial drives using MCSA techniques

Three phase squirrel cage induction motors are work horses of industry and are the widely used industrial drives. With the passage of time the machine may develop faults and may hamper the production line that may lead to production and financial losses. A proper planning of maintenance schedule and condition monitoring is essential to reduce such financial loss and shut down time. A condition monitoring system which can predict and identify the prefault condition is the need of the age to prevent such unwanted breakdown time. The MCSA (motor current signature analysis) technique is found one of the most frequently used technique to identify the prefault condition. This paper focuses on experimental results to prove that MCSA technique can identify the good and cracked rotor bar in three phase squirrel cage induction motors under no-load and different load conditions. The diagnostics strategy is presented in this paper and variables that influence the diagnosis are discussed.