Modulation Sideband Separation Using the Teager-Kaiser Energy Operator for Rotor Fault Diagnostics of Induction Motors

Broken rotor bar (BRB) faults are one of the most common faults in induction motors (IM). One or more broken bars can reduce the performance and efficiency of the IM and hence waste the electrical power and decrease the reliability of the whole mechanical system. This paper proposes an effective fault diagnosis method using the Teager-Kaiser energy operator (TKEO) for BRB faults detection based on the motor current signal analysis (MCSA). The TKEO is investigated and applied to remove the main supply component of the motor current for accurate fault feature extraction, especially for an IM operating at low load with low slip. Through sensing the estimation of the instantaneous amplitude (IA) and instantaneous frequency (IF) of the motor current signal using TKEO, the fault characteristic frequencies can be enhanced and extracted for the accurate detection of BRB fault severities under different operating conditions. The proposed method has been validated by simulation and experimental studies that tested the IMs with different BRB fault severities to consider the effectiveness of the proposed method. The obtained results are compared with those obtained using the conventional envelope analysis methods and showed that the proposed method provides more accurate fault diagnosis results and can distinguish the BRB fault types and severities effectively, especially for operating conditions with low loads.