Kombolcha Institute of Technology

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project title: “Induction Motor Protection Using Microcontroller”

Focus Area: Control Engineering

BSc thesis/semester project

Group Members:

1. Wondimagegn Tarkegn WOUR/1161/09

2. Chera Hambisa WOUR/0809/09
3. Gebrie Aschalew WOUR/0708/08

Advisors: 1, Amanuel

2, Zufan

submission date: ___/ ___ /____

 BSC/ Semester Project Proposal 2013 E.C

ABSTRACT

The main aim of this project is to monitor and control the induction motor via microcontroller for
large scale Industrial Environment. This protection scheme protects the induction motor from
under voltage, over voltage and over current, overheating and over speed conditions. The overall
process is monitored by microcontroller. Microcontroller sends signal through transistor to relay
for operation. The current transformer is an I-V converter, which gives output in terms of voltage
and can be fed to the microcontroller directly. The output of these transformers will vary
proportionately with respect to its input. The microcontroller senses the voltage, compares with
the reference value and sends control signals to the respective protective relays. The induction
motor can be started and stopped through the relay developed with this system. Therefore,
controlling, monitoring, and protection of the system are realized in real time. This is one of the
best technologies and for this purpose we are proposing microcontroller based control system for
industrial plant.

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Contents
List of figures............................................................................................................................................................................. 3
List of tables .............................................................................................................................................................................. 3
CHAPTER ONE .......................................................................................................................................................................... 4
1 INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................................. 4
1.1 problem statement:................................................................................................................................................. 7
1.2 Scope of the project:.............................................................................................................................................. 7
1.3 Significance of the project: ........................................................................................................................................ 8
1.4 Objective: ........................................................................................................................................................................ 8
1.4.1 General Objective: ....................................................................................................................... 8
1.4.2 Specific Objective: ....................................................................................................................... 8
1.5 Hypotheses: ..................................................................................................................................... 9
2. METHODOLOGY: ............................................................................................................................................................. 9
2.1General block diagram.................................................................................................................................................. 9
2.2Material requirement ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
2.2.1 Software component .................................................................................................................... 9
2.2.2 Hardware component: .................................................................................................................. 9
3. WORK PLAN: .................................................................................................................................................................... 10
4.BUDGET: .............................................................................................................................................................................. 10
CHAPTER TWO....................................................................................................................................................................... 11
1, Literature review: .......................................................................................................................................................... 11
REFERENCE: .......................................................................................................................................................................... 12

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List of figures
Figure 1: Ferrari’s induction motor (1885) ..................................................................................... 5
Figure 1.1: Tesla’s induction motor (1886) ..................................................................................... 5
Figure 1.2: state of the art 3 phase induction motor ....................................................................... 7

List of tables
Table 1: work plan .............................................................................................................................10

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CHAPTER ONE

1 INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND
Because the induction motor is rugged in construction and its operation is easy, it is employed in
most manufacturing industries to drive loads. But, the three phase induction motor generally
suffers from under voltage, overvoltage, overheating, single phasing and phase reversal problems.
The life of the motor may be reduced by 50% if it is allowed to reach and operate at a temperature
above its maximum rating [1]. because of their popularity in industries it becomes necessary to
protect them against faults so as to ensure uninterrupted operation and function. Various parameter
controlling and monitoring systems are therefore other types of machine, but in case of induction
machine the controlling and monitoring systems are not extensively used due to high cost of
installation and physical constraints. So as to overcome the limitations in monitoring and
controlling, microcontroller based System is used which makes it simple and cost-effective.
It requires least maintenance as compare to the other electrical motors. Induction motor speed
control is nowadays more easy and versatile due to the advancement in the field of power
electronics and hence is easy to replace other costly and controllable motors. The protection of
induction motor plays an important role in its long life service. Researchers have done costly and
limited protection for the stator windings protections, broken rotor bars protection, thermal
protection etc. Mainly the induction motor needs protection from the variation of the input supply
for small motors which is in common use not only in big industry but also in small scale industries.
The small scale industries are not able to provide costly protection to the drives in use as it will
increase their capital cost. Hence a cheap and compact design has been done for protection of
induction motor against unbalance voltage, under voltage, over voltage, short circuit and thermal
protection. It has been also designed for critical loads which need to be run even under single
phasing condition. Due to the poor power quality the damage of induction motors in small scale
industries needs to be taken care of. The proposed design can be also used for speed control,
improvement of efficiency under poor power quality service manually by introduction of a single
two-way switch. Many researches has been done in this area but they are costly and unfeasible in
our condition. The overall cost of the protection equipment should not be more than 15% of the

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total cost of the actual machine. Keeping this in mind the design has been proposed using
microcontroller, relays, small Current transformers and Power transformers, so that the overall
cost is low. But the efficiency of the protection scheme should not be compromised.
The motor protection is required as day to day life induction motor usage increases a lot as it has
some specific merits.
Induction motors are widely used-as industrial drive motors. In order to reduce the-size and to
minimize the cost, large capacity motors are designed so that, the magnetic and current densities
are close to the limiting levels. Such motors are sensitive to abnormal operating conditions like
overvoltage or over loading etc. and hence require high speed and reliable protection scheme. The
digital relays based on microprocessors or microcontrollers can provide accurate high speed
protection. This project presents a protection scheme for induction motor from incipient faults
using Arduino microcontroller. The induction motor experiences several types of electrical faults
like over/under voltage, over/under current, overheating. Due to these electrical faults, the
windings of the motor get over heated which lead to insulation failure and thus reduce the life time
of the motor.

History of induction motor[8]

Faraday discovered the electromagnetic induction law around 1831 and Maxwell
formulated the laws of electricity (or Maxwell’s equations) around 1860. The knowledge
was ripe for the invention of the induction machine which has two fathers: Galileo Ferraris
(1885) and Nicola Tesla (1886). Their induction machines are shown in Figure 1 and Figure
1.1.

Figure 1
Ferrari’s induction motor (1885) Figure 1.1 Tesla’s induction motor (1886)

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The motors have been supplied from a two-phase a.c. power source and thus contained
two phase concentrated coil windings 1-1’ and 2-2’ on the ferromagnetic stator core. In
Ferrari’s patent the rotor was made of a copper cylinder, in the Tesla’s patent the rotor was
made of a ferromagnetic cylinder provided with a short-circuited winding.

The modern induction motors have more elaborated topologies (Figure 1.1) and their
performance is much better, the principle has remained basically the same. That is, a
multiphase a.c. stator winding produces a traveling field which induces voltages that produce
currents in the short-circuited (or closed) windings of the rotor. The interaction between the
stator produced field and the rotor induced currents produces torque and thus operates the
induction motor. As the torque at zero rotor speed is nonzero, the induction motor is self-
starting.

The three -phase a.c. power grid capable of delivering energy at a distance to induction
motors and other consumers has been put forward by Dolivo-Dobrovolsky around 1880.
Dolivo-Dobrovolsky invented the induction motor with the wound rotor in 1889 and
subsequently the cage rotor in a topology very similar to that used today. Also invented the
double-cage rotor. That, around 1900 the induction motor was ready for wide industrial use.
Before 1910, in Europe, locomotives provided with induction motor propulsion, were
capable of delivering 200 km/h.

At least for transportation, the d.c. motor took over all markets until around 1985 when
the IGBT PWM inverter was provided for efficient frequency changers. This promoted the
induction motor spectacular comeback in variable speed drives with applications in all
industries.

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Fig1.3 state of the art 3 phase induction motor

1.1 problem statement:

Problems that arise with the working of an AC induction motor are common these days if left
unmonitored. Here a protection system is implemented using which we monitor the working
of an AC induction motor during normal conditions and trip conditions. If any problems
become evident due to faults that normally happen in the motor like stator faults, rotor faults,
bearing faults, etc., we can either vary the input voltage and current to bring the motor back
to normal condition or we can shut down the motor before damaging the stator and rotor
components of the motor to point from which recovery is not possible, thus avoiding
unexpected failure of the motor and preventing an entire industrial process from shutting down
all of a sudden which can be dangerous to the people working in the vicinity and helps save
unforeseen expenditure that may result from the above mentioned problems. This project will
develop a fault detection and protection method for induction motors to detect external fault
experienced by the motor using microcontroller technique.

1.2 Scope of the project:

The scope of this project is to develop continuous protection and control system for induction
motor based on Arduino Uno microcontroller. All the sensors are used to acquire data from the
induction motor and transfer the data they acquire to Arduino Uno microcontroller board.

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Finally, we give highest emphasis to the software design and implementation in order to develop
a suitable algorithm that will promptly interact with the, microcontroller and the LCD. This
contributes to detect and repair induction motor as soon as fault occur so as to reduce man power
required which saves time and energy. Major contribution of the project:
 To reduce man power required
 To detect and repair induction motor as soon as fault occur
 To reduce unforeseen expenditure due to motor operation interruption.
 To save wastage time

1.3 Significance of the project:

The induction motors are predominant in industrial applications. Thus this project will help
to provide protection to the industrial motors. The design of the system will maintain security,
provides high reliability. The protection of these motors from such fault is very important.

1.4 Objective:

1.4.1 General Objective:

 The main objective of this project is induction motor protection using
microcontroller.

1.4.2 Specific Objective:

 Design the system using microcontroller based methodology.

 To design temperature, current, speed and voltage sensing circuit that will be interfaced to
the microcontroller for monitoring
 To develop microcontroller based controlling system
 To identify and prevent faults in induction motor
 Implement the program using software simulation.
 Test the performance and reliability of the new system.
 To simulate electrical system and improve it into practical

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1.5 Hypotheses:
The circuit will take the full control of the motor and it will protect the motor from several. The
circuit is fully controlled by the microcontroller and the microcontroller will continuously
monitor the voltages of the three phases and if the voltage goes abnormal then it will switch off
the motor until they are normal.

2. METHODOLOGY:
For successful completion of this project some steps will be followed to carry out different tasks.
Different literature will be revised relating to this project and data will be collected about condition
and control parameter of induction motor. Based on this parameter system model will be designed.
Some software's are selected to develop the software programing. So here a system is designed
with an alternative method to prevent the failures that happen in induction motors using
microcontroller and sensors to measure the different parameters related to induction motors such
as current, voltage, temperature and speed.

2.1General block diagram

Problem Literature Data System Software

Identi fic model Simulati
Review Collection design
ation design on on

2.2Material requirement

2.2.1 Software component

mikro c
proteus

2.2.2 Hardware component:

Microcontroller (Arduino Uno)
Sensor
Capacitors
Resistors
Induction motor
and additional electrical components

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3. WORK PLAN:

Year 2013E.C
Activities
February March April May June

Project proposal 

Ch1: overall Introduction 

Ch2: Literature review 

Ch3: Methodology of 
System Design & Analysis

Ch4: Result & Discussion 

Ch5: conclusion & Future 

Work

4.BUDGET:

There is no actual budget funded for this project.

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CHAPTER TWO

1, Literature review:
Different alternatives to detect and diagnose different types of faults in induction motors have
been proposed and implemented in the last years. We will try to see both similar and related
literature papers on the area and give review below

William H. Kersting stated that three phase induction motor can continue to run when one
phase of the supply gone out of service. This may be due to any fuse blowing or opening of
protective device of the motor, at step-down transformer or at feeder end. At this condition the
three-phase induction motor continue to run but the motor will heat up quickly and it should be
protected by removing it from the service at the instant of single phasing. When phase opens at
step down transformer or at feeder end, the stator and rotor losses increases to ten times and the
shaft output power decreases to negligible. But if the single phasing occurs at motor terminals
the losses increases twice as compare to steady state losses and the shaft power reduces to nearly
70%. To protect the motor all the terminal should be open. [3]

 DRAW BACKS: the main draw backs of William H. Kerstin’s paper on induction motor
protection is that he tried to solve the problem via the classical method while Our project
intends to modify this via the use of microcontroller.

Sutherland P. E. and Short T.A. described that the for single phase fault the three phase
reclosers are widely employed on distribution feeders. The majority faults are single phase. Its
negative effect occurs on the other two phase customers, because the distribution line is mainly
supplying the load to single phase customers. If three phase reclosers did not open from the
service, and the problem arises for three phase industry. On an average single phase fault occurs
at 70%, two phase fault occurs at 20% and three phase fault occurrence is 10%.[6]

 DRAW BACKS: the main draw backs of Sutherland P. E. and Short T.A.’s paper is that
it focuses on the statistical data analyzation of 3 phase induction motor and only on single
phasing fault while We intend to focus on designing the system for several faults.

Sudha M. and Anbalagan proposed a technique to save the three phase induction motor from
single phasing. In this technique, PIC16F877 microcontroller has been used to sample the values
of each phase and converted them to low voltage ac by means of transformer. The signals are
converted to digital value using ADC converter. The controller continuously compares the digital
value with the reference value and when the fault occurs, it opens the normally close contactor
and disconnects it from the power supply. Single phasing, under voltage and over voltage
protection is done practically on a 2kW motor and the motor is isolated if any of these condition
occurs. [2]

Pragasen Pillay et.al. examines the three phase induction motor under the influence of under
voltage and over voltage. The voltage at motor terminals may be higher than the nominal value

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in a complex industrial system and can be well below from nominal value in a heavily loaded
industrial system. IEEE, NEMA and other power communities have different defined the voltage
unbalance. The complex algebra is avoided in these definitions. In this paper calculation of the
unbalance of voltage have been done on true basis with complex algebra and compared with
NEMA standards. [4]

Faiz J. et.al. has studied the negative impact of the unbalanced voltages on the performance of
three phase induction motor. In this paper the comparison of the voltage unbalance definitions of
NEMA, IEEE and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has been done. The studies
showed that the definition given by the NEMA, IEEE are simple to calculate as compared to
IEC. But all the three give only an idea about the percentage unbalance and needs to be
modified. [5]

Javed A. and Izhar T. have proposed the protection of three phase induction motor based on
voltage measurement and is not enough to protect the motor if the fault occurs at distribution
transformer or at substation feeder. If fault occurs at motor terminals then the voltage
measurement can protect the motor very well. The current measurement device should be
implemented within the protective device. They have also proposed a phase measurement device
which can measure the phase difference of the voltages because when the fault occurs at any
other location rather than the motor terminals, then the faulted phase will draw negative
sequence current and work as a voltage generator. The voltage developed is close to line voltage
but the measurement scheme is not able to detect the fault, however the phasor difference of the
faulted phase changes. [7]

REFERENCE:

[1] Tarun Agarwal (2013), Induction Motor Protection system Circuit and its Working.
[2] Sudha M. and Anbalgan P., "A Novel Protecting Method for Induction Motor Against Faults
Due to Voltage Unbalance and Single Phasing," 33rd Annual Conference of the IEEE on
Industrial Electronics Society, 2007, pp. 1144-1148, 5-8 Nov. 2007, Taipei.
[3] Kersting W.H., "Causes and effects of single-phasing induction motors," IEEE Transactions
on Industry Applications, Vol. 41, no. 6, pp. 1499-1505, Dec. 2005.
[4] Pillay P., Hofmann P. and Manyage M., “induction motors operating with a combination of
unbalanced voltages and over or under voltages," IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion,
Vol. 17, no. 4, pp. 485-491, Dec. 2002

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[5] Faiz J., Ebrahimpour H. and Pillay P., "Influence of unbalanced voltage on the steadystate
performance of a three-phase squirrel-cage induction motor," IEEE Transactions on Energy
Conversion, Vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 657-662, Dec. 2004
[6] Sutherland P.E. and Short T.A., "Effect of Single-Phase Reclosing on Industrial Loads,"
Industry Applications Conference, 2006. 41st Annual Meeting. Conference Record of the
2006 IEEE , Vol.5, pp.2636-2644, 8-12 Oct. 2006, Tampa, FL.
[7] Javed A. and Izhar T., "An improved method for the detection of phase failure faults in poly
phase Induction machines," Third International Conference on Electrical Engineering, 2009,
ICEE '09, pp. 1-6, 9-11 April 2009, Lahore
[8] http://www.edisontechcenter.org/inductionMotors.html;

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