Using motors to detect degradation

摘要

Centrifugal pumps are widely used in industry and many are driven by induction motors. Failure due to pump bearing degradation would result in an unscheduled shutdown leading to production and revenue losses. Parasuram Harihara and Alexander Parlos propose a technique to detect bearing deterioration using the motor's electrical signals. The use of the pump's motor as a transducer to detect pump-related failures is based on the hypothesis that a faulty pump will not be able to produce the required work horsepower and the motor torque will be influenced through the pump speed. Any changes in the motor torque will be reflected as changes in the motor current. Hence, motor currents can be analysed for the presence of a fault in the system. However, in order to remove the effects of changing input conditions, the motor input voltages must be analysed as well. Therefore, schemes to detect centrifugal pump faults based on analysing the motor's electrical signals have gained importance and attention over the past few years.