Recent Developments of Induction Motor Drives Fault Diagnosis

Using AI Techniques
Fiorenzo Filippetti
Dip. di Ing. Elettrica, Univ. di Bologna, via hsorgimento 2, Bologna, Italy, filippetti@eletb2.ingng.unibo.it
Giovanni Franceschini, Carla Tassoni
Dip. di Ing. dell’hformazione, Univ. di Parma, viale delle Scienze, Parma, Italy, chiara@ee.unipr.it
P.Vas
Department of Engineering, Intelligent Motion Control Group, Aberdeen, UK, p.vas@eng.abdn.ac.uk
Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, electrical machines and drives Diagnostics.

Abstract - Thepaper presents a review ofthe recent developments advantages and the validity limits. Different faults of an induction
in the field of diagnosis of electrical machines and drives based machine are first considered. Then the paper considers some
on art$cial intelligence (AI). This review covers the application 9yical faults of the more usual converters which can supply an
of expert systems, neural networks and fuzzy logic systems that mduction machine.
can be integrated into each other and also with more traditional
techniques to overcome specific problems. II FAULT SIGNATURES OF AN INDUCTION MACHINE
Usually a diagnostic procedure starts from a fault tree developed With reference to the electrical and mechanical faults of an
on the basis of the physical behaviour of the electrical system induction machine, it is well known that it is llnked with the
under consideration. In this phase the howledge of well tested harmonic content of the stator currents, i.e. each fault is
models able to siniulate the electrical machine in diflerenf fault associated with the presence of specific harmonic components.
conditions is fundamental to obtain the patterns characterising Some of these fault fiequencies are now recalled.
thefaults. Then thefault tree navigation pe$ormed by an expert An induction machine rotor asymmetry introduced by broken bars
system inference engine leads to the choice of suitable diagnostic or dynamic eccentricity produces spectrum lines at frequencies:
indexes, referred to a particular fault, and relevant to build an
input dataset for speciJic AI (neural networks, fuziy logic or frbb (If2kdf (1)
neuro-fuzzy) systems. where s is the slip. f is the supply frequency and k is an integer
The discussed methodologies, that play a general role in the equal to 1,2 ... hi order to analyse these type of faults, a dynamic
diagnosticfield, are applied to an induction machine, utilising as model of the induction machine has been developed in [9, 101.
input signals the instantaizeous voltages and currents. In This model allows the computation of both the side-band currents
addition, the supply converter is also considered to also at frequencies (fX2ks)f characterising a rotor fault.
incorporate in the diagnostic procedure the most gpical failures The main effect produced by a stator asymmetry, e.g. short circuit
ofpower electronic components. or a static eccentncity, is a negative sequence component in the
A brief description of the various techniques is provided, to input currents.
highlight the advantages and the validity limits of using AI
technologies.Some application examples are discussed and, areas h s c = -f (2)
for future research are also indicated.
In [111 a model for stator winding short circuits is presented: this
model is based on the space-vector theory [12] particularly
I INTRODUCTION
suitable to consider the effects of spatial harmonics, that can not
The monitoring and fault detection of electrical machines have be disregarded, introduced by stator winding asymmetry. It
moved in recent years from traditional methodologies to follows from this model that the negative sequence component is
methodologies that utilise AI techniques. Such techniques require the main effect due to stator asymmetry. Models referred to
a “minimum configuration intelligence” since no detailed analysis dynamic or static eccentricity can be found in the literature [13,
of the fault mechanism is necessary, nor any modelling of the 141, leading to anomalous current spectrum lines as well. These
system is needed. When an AI technique is used, fault detection models are able to consider an higher order effect of the
and evaluation can be accomplished without an expert. asymmetry than the first one, therefore eccentricity detection
Several quantities have been utilised as input signals: stator follows also experimental procedures based on the variation of
currents and voltages, magnetic fields and frame vibrations. In other typical current spectrum lines, i.e. the slot lines [15, 161.
general, stator currents and voltages are prefened because they Considering stator short circuits, the amplitude of the negative
allow to realise non-invasive diagnostic systems and the sensors sequence component can be related to the percentage of the short
required are usually present in the drive considered. circuited turns and to a limited number of machine parameters,
Induction motors play an important role in manufacturing while it is quite independent of the machine operating conditions.
environments, therefore this type of machine is mainly considered Therefore it constitutes the reference variable to inter-turn failure
and many diagnostic procedures are proposed both from industry diagnosis.
and from academia [ l , 41. Some work has also been done on The mechanical damages referred to bearing failures introduce
converter-fed induction motor drives in order to realise a fault harmonic components in the current spectrum at the frequencies:
tolerant drive avoiding shut down if load condition permit [5, 6, 7,
81. The main steps of a diagnostic session can be classified as fbd =f*fb (3)
follows: where fb is a mechanical frequency depending on the type of fault
1. Signature extraction and on the bearing characteristics [17, 181.
2. Fault identification Other components at different frequencies can be introduced by
3. Fault severity evaluation. load anomalies and they cause misunderstandings because these
spectrum lines can be c o h s e d with the ones due to machme
T h ~ paper
s describes the various steps and lllghlights the functions failures [ 19,201,
h t can be accomplished by using AI techniques underlying the

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 The problem to individualise and separate the various fault effects consequently the non-invasive criteria), the expert system devoted
(the already mentioned steps a and b) relies on interpretation of to machine diagnostics has to follow the task architecture
the frequency components contained in the current spectra schematized in Fig. 3.
together with the consideration of all the machine operating
conditions. The task is very difficult to solve since besides the
fault conditions. the current spectrum is d u e n c e d by other
factors as electric supply, noise and motor geometry, moreover the
system
machine could be in non-stationary operating conditions.
It is natural to consider an expert system based on objects and
production rules as manager of all the diagnostic procedure. Acquisition spectrum lines searc
L
Obviously the crucial point is the development of a knowledge- [ - - I
base that generally requires both deterministic and heuristic
reasoning [21-241.
The production rules model the logical inferential concepts and let
the system draw conclusions from data and take direct action. The
objects model the data structures suitably designed to retrieve and Fig. 3. Expert system fragment scheme
incorporate into the knowledge base the basic data of the machine
under test (i.e. type, power, pole number, rotor bar number etc.) Starting from the time after the machine can be considered in the
and all the other data necessary for the diagnostic aim. steady state, two acquisitions of the instantaneous signals over
different time intervals and with different sampling rates are
III DATA RETRIEVING STRATEGIES activated. The first one is related to a small observation interval
and to a high sampling frequency. Using the procedure described
The fist decision is to state the stationary condition of the in [26, 271, the first slot harmonic line (frequency f ) can be
machine. For this aim a program that performs a suitable data searched and the slip value can be computed as:
acquisition and a short time Fourier transform can be activated.
This transform works by dividing the signal into consecutive or
overlapping portions and returns the sequence of the
corresponding FFT. By elaborating this sequence or by visual
inspection as well, it is possible state a time after the machine is where p is the pole pair number, f is the supply frequency and N
in steady state [20,25]. is the rotor slot number. The second one is related to a large
observation interval and to a low sampling frequency. The choice
of these parameters is strictly linked with the slip values so with
the harmonic components to be searched. The criteria to make a
suitable choice and to obtain a good frequency resolution are
depicted in detail in [28].

IV SPECTRUM LINE SEARCH AND FAULT

2
I large amount of spectral information to a suitable level. Its
Fig. 1 - The input current variation for a 5.5 kW machine with a
load torque of 30 N starting at 0.5 s
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Fig. 2 - The two dimensional view of the corresponding short time
Fourier transform
As an example, Figs 1 and 2 show, for a 5.5 kW healthy machine,
the stator current variation and the corresponding short time
Fourier transform. It can be seen that the FFT is steady after
approximately one second, as the input current profile contms.
As depicted in section II the main harmonic component relevant
for diagnostic purposes depends on the machine speed or slip. To
continue the operations and to avoid the need to measure the
machine speed using conventional transducers (observing
CLASSIFICATION
At this point the role of the expert system inferential engine is to
filter the harmonic components and perform a reduction of the
pnmary task is to eliminate those components that provide no
useful failure information and perform a component classification.
There are various methods to perform this task [29, 301. The best
way is to have at disposal a database containing the machine
history in terms of trends of well-stated failure components, i.e.
those related to air gap eccentricities, stator short circuits, broken
rotor bars and bearing failures. Moreover the expert system has to
also consider those components which are of potential interest
because of their power and repetition.
The knowledge of a component trend is a crucial point because it
makes the expert system a robust threshold handler which decides
to consider or ignore a particular failure component. Fig. 4 shows
a typical example related to a 900 kW induction machine
extensively tested (the figure shows only a little part of the more
than 1000 tests performed). The trend of the sum of the two fault
components (in percentage with respect the component at the
supply frequency) at frequencies (1Gs)f is shown [lo]. A bar gets
effectively broken during the 50-th case. It can be seen that
performing a trend analysis, it is easy to determine an attention
threshold and to evaluate consequently the weight of a component
(in the case of Fig. 4 the computed threshold is of 0.5%).
Obviously it is difficult for an expert system to manage large
amount of data. To reduce the computational requirements, the
expert system could become a simple threshold handler, by
managing only the thresholds related to the various failure
components. These thresholds can be directly computed by using
simplified models or formulae or can be previously computed by
performing separately the trend analysis [26,27].

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 output node lattice. The more the input vectors are different, the
more effective the clustering becomes, and the various regions are
well separated, realizing a fault topographic map that can be also
utilized immediately by visual inspection. Considering for
simplicity only the rotor broken bars (fault situation I), stator
short circuits (fault situation 2), and the bearing damages (fault
situation 3), we have three indicators as inputs. Restricting the
attention to a single fault, it is obvious that the input FS, for
bearing damages, should contain a consistent value in the third
position, while the other values should be negligible; on the
contraq the FS related to the rotor bar breakages and stator short
0 10 20 30 40 50 circuits should contain consistent values respectively in the first
Cases
and second position. Finally the FS related to the healthy
Fig. 4 - Trend of the input current side-band sum of a 900kW 6kV situations contain all negligible values. Therefore the various
8pole induction machine. categories of input FS have well defmed similarity relations. Thus
By combining the information derived from the trends of the the unsupervised neural network gets a diagnostic pre-processor
for classificationpurposes [18,29, 30, 32, 331.
various harmonic components, from the attention thresholds and
As an example Fig.6 shows the fault map trained by rotor
considering the machine operating conditions as well, the system
asymmetries (l), stator asymmetries ( 2 ) and bearing damages (3)
can determine directly a possible fault situation accomplishing in
together with healthy machine cases (H) [ 181.
sequence the steps 1 and 2 of section I. As an example, Fig. 5
shows the knowledge base fragment referred to the stator fault Fault Map
identification presented in [3I].
251 H HH H H I H i

I
w DATABASE

Current Spectrum Computation:Research of data fiequmcies I

I
HH II
I Only Supply frequency present
R.M.S Current Values Comparision I ',I : 11
,222
I 3 3 I
p&q 0 5 10 15 20 25
I
I
I
I
Fig. 6 Fault map example to distinguish stator, rotor and bearing
I
I
R.M.S. Voltage Values Comparision damages.
I
I
By using the procedure previously depicted, the steps 1 and 2 are
obtained utilizing an inference engine or the combination between
an inference engine, an unsupervised neural network and a
conventional technique. Whlle the attention thresholds are
computed via simplified models, two AI technologies and one
deterministic technology are utilized. In the second case the expert
system performs some evaluation functions providing the input FS
for the neural network that completes the task providing the final
fault identification.
" With regard to the training phase of the network it has to be
considered that an unsupervised learning does not require a
teacher. Therefore all the FS obtained from on line monitoring
Fig. 5 - Expert system knowledge base fragment. systems [26], Gom the expert system inference or finally, if
available, &om model-based approaches, can constitute
However, a expert system structure can also be considered more components of the learning dataset. The result justifies the effort
simple than the one already described. For example th~sis the to collect these data. In fact for this purpose, once the learning
case when the trends or the attention thresholds are not known or dataset is built and the learning phase is performed, the neural
there is reduced computing power. For this purpose the role of network embed and generalize the prior knowledge of the expert
the expert system can be restricted to the search of the harmonic system. It also provides a very fast response in terms of fault
components and the fault classification task is omitted. The goal classification and requires a mini" configuration intelligence
of the inference engine is then just the retrieving of a suitable set to perform its features [34]. Moreover if a suitable normalization
of harmonic components that can correctly label the so-called is performed on the input FS, then the trained neural network can
Failure Set (FS). Once the FS is known, at the end of the expert be applied to a category of similar machines.
system inference, another AI methodology can be used for the Recalling the structure of the expert system production rules (see
fault classification task. In fact an unsupervised neural network, section E), it can be noticed that a particular hypothesis can not
previously trained, can be introduced to finally classify the single always be declared true in exact terms. Therefore it is necessary to
type of fault. consider not only 'true' or 'false' but a range between them. This
Different FS containing current spectrum lines related to different is because the reasoning of the experts is often expressed not by
machine situations are presented. An unsupervised neural network numbers (crisp values) but by linguistic terms as "small", "large",
(NN) clusters the available FS into characteristic regions of an "low" etc. taken from the natural language. An other AT

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methodology, fizzy logic: gives a complete solution to these that indicate the fault seventy, starting from examples utilized in
problems [35, 361. the learning procedure. But the NN sensitivity to synthesize the
The essential parts of a fuzzy logic system are a set of linguistic system depends on the chosen input variables which must be
rules of the form IF A THEN B, where A and B are linguistic optimal fault indicators. To llfill h s condition and get an
variables characterised by appropriate membership functions, and effective method, a preventive model based study could be
an algorithm which can convert a linguistic strategy based on resolute and this justifies the previously mentioned importance of
expert knowledge into a fuzzy inference. Generally an expert the model based approaches. Therefore the input output dataset
system can have fuzzy and crisp rules or more specifically some can be obtained, as well as from experimental data, and also from
fuzzy knowledge islands and some crisp knowledge islands. model based approaches [4 1,451.
Finally when the investigated problem is too complex to be As an example, Fig.7 shows the NN architecture to quantify stator
analysed by quantitative techniques and the available sources of short circuit entity [46]. The negative sequence component In is
information are only interpreted qualitatively, the expert system quite independent of the operating conditions and it constitutes a
can be completely fuzzy, and becomes a fuzzy inference system. reference variable to inter-twn failure diagnosis while the positive
It is possible to improve our expert system in performing the steps component Ip results a function both of the short-circuit percentage
1 and 2 through the insertion of the fuzzy logic concepts, but we and slip value, but the utilization o f In, Ip and s does not lead to
will discuss in detail this .methodologywith regard to step 3, i.e. the neural network convergence. However, a suitable process of Ip
the fault severity evaluation. This third step answers the necessity leads to an other effective variable, and the diagnostic index is the
to move toward the quantitative analysis and to diagnose the fault modulus difference between the phasors Ip and IPo (positive
entity. sequence component of the healthy machine in the same operating
condition) divided by Ipo that is (1I,,-Ip~l/Ip~ ). This variable is
V FAULT SEVERITY EVALUATION independent of the operating conditions and its utilization
improves the network convergence. Therefore the input-output
From a theoretical point of view the conventional general method dataset has been organized as shown in Fig. 7, (where s is the slip,
to face the fault severity evaluation is the objective knowledge
s, is the rated slip, I, is the rated current and fp is the output fault
based on well tested mathematical models that have the percentage). Furthermore, if a suitable normalization of the
capabilities to evidence the various machine faults. Different
diagnostic indexes is provided and simplifying assumptions are
algorithms can also be utilised, e.g. the parameter variation or the introduced, a NN able to diagnose a class of similar machines can
state variables variation consequent to the faults [37]. be obtained [47].
Unfortunately an heavy and time consuming computational task
must be performed due to the models’ complexity and as
discussed above, a large number of machine design parameters is
required by the models. Furthermore, parameters and state
variables determined by conventional models depend on model
accuracy and sensitivity. Consequently fault-parameter variation
or fault-state variables variation correlation is often difficult to
evaluate 1381.
By remaining in the field of the objective knowledge, an
interesting possibility is the development of faulty machine
models devoted to specific effect due to one specific fault can be
computed [9,11]. They have a low level of requirements in terms
of design parameters and computational features, moreover, being
oriented to only one fault effect, they can be developed to obtain
for the specific fault a very high accuracy. For these reasons these
methods seem to give better results with respect to the parameter
or state estimation method. By adopting suitable assumptions it is
also possible to derive simplified models which are characterized
by a very simple link among the main indicators and the fault I I I
severity (often the simplified model can be reduced only to a
formula) [39,40].
s/(l .kJ In& 1 4 ~ AI&
Fig. 7 ANN architecture for stator short circuit diagnosis
Obviously the simplified models have to be validated
experimentally to state the validity limits, but when confined into Application of an ANN leads to a problem similar to the one
the limits, they can be used, as mentioned in the previous discussed for the expert system production rules in section IV.In
sections, for a first specific fault quantisation or a threshold fact the concrete reasoning is often expressed not by numbers
overcoming evaluation. As example, the simplified approximated (crisp values) but by linguistic terms as “small”, “large”, “low”
formula which links the main diagnostic index related to rotor etc. taken from the natural language. The crisp values of the fault
asymmetries and labeled as SI with the broken bar number n, indicators obtained by fault models, may be seen as a drawback of
being N the total bar number, is given by [41]: the diagnostic system, owing to the general requirement to obtain
SI Z n I N (5) heuristic or qualitative information on the system. To approach
the performances of a diagnostic system to the real world and gain
At this point a perplexity arises. Why are we scanning the a more direct intelligence, again an AI technique, i.e. fuzzy logic,
conventional methods based on mathematical models, while our provides a resolute help.
aim is to illustrate innovative AI methods?. The reason is that a A system based on fuzzy logic allows to transform heuristic and
model based approach is sometimes fundamental to obtain linguistic terms into numerical values via fuzzy rules and
effective AI methods as it will be shown below. membership hctions and is able to approximate the complex
A very new and attractive solution for the fault severity evaluation relationships related to a diagnostic task. To develop a specific
can be found applying again the AI techniques, i.e. the supervised example, the detection of broken rotor bars fault severity is
neural approach, fuzzy approach and neural-fuzzy approach [41- considered by utilizing Mamdami-style fuzzy inference and using
441. A supervised NN is a general function approximator which as input variables the fault components 11 and I2 at frequencies
can synthesize the relationships between the different variables (1k2s)f provided into the FS by the expert system [47].
constituting the input vectors and the output diagnostic indexes

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 A model based analysis, previously performed on the 500W test
motor, gives the guidelines for the choice of the linguistic
variables to evaluate the fault components severity. For simplicity
we consider only the labels “small”, “medium”, and “large”. The
simulated data suggest to consider “small” to an amplitude up to -
50 dl3, both “small’ and “medium” up to 4 0 dE3, etc. till -30 dE3
that can be considered “large”. Obviously the amplitude of the
fault components increases with the number of broken bars. By
choosing the generalized bell shaped membership functions with
suitable parameters, it is possible to obtain the membership
functions for the two fault components 11 and 12. The shape of the
11 fuzzy sets is then shown in Fig. 8.
Membership function plots
Fig. 8. Input variables fuzzy sets for 11
At this stage the output fuz.zy set related to the broken bars (bb)
must be defined. Following again the simulation results and
recalling that a diagnostic system must be able to detect the
threshold between healthy and faulty conditions, it is sufficient to
consider, in terms of linguistic variables, the following five
situations: ‘no broken bars’, ‘an incipient fault’, ‘one broken bar’,
‘one-or-two broken bars’ and finally ‘two broken bars’. For the
output fuzzy sets five Gaussian functions centered respectively in
suitable points have been chosen.
By considering the two dimensional matrix of the input variables,
each subspace is associated with a fuzzy output situation.
Consequently the fuzzy rules can be unequivocally determined as
follows [36]:
1. If(& is small) and (12 is small) then (no)
2. I f ( 1 1 is small) and (I2 is medium) then 09
3. If(.& is small) and (12 is large) then (one)
4. I f ( I 1 is medium) and (12 is small) then (g
5. If (I1 is medium) and (I2 is medium) then (one)
6. If(I1 is medium) and (12 is large) then (one-or-two)
7. If(& is large) and (12 is small) then (one)
8. I f ( 1 1 is large) and (12 is medium) then (one-or-two)
9. I f ( 1 1 is large) and (12 is large) then (two)
Fig. 9 provides a 3D map of the input and output variables.
Fig. 9. A 3D map of the input-output relationships between the
sideband components11and 12.
In [36,47] is shown in detail the diagnostic improvement obtained
by using this approach in case of rotor fault detection.
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By makmg a fust comparison between neural network approach
and fuzzy approach it is possible to draw the following
conclusions. A fuzzy approach models a complex problem
employing if-then rules and linguistic variables to capture directly
the qualitative aspects of human reasoning process. However the
problem is shifted to the membership function and rule tuning.
On the contrary the neural network technique application allows
to give an accurate solution to a Particular fault problem, also
without the need of accurate knowledge of the faulted system. To
obtain further possibilities, it is necessary to join the features of
neural networks and fuzzy techmques, and this is the so-called
neuro-fuzzy approach.
A very powerful technique following this concept is the ANFIS
(adaptive-network-based fuzzy inference system). Thls neural
network is an adaptive network which implements, as overall
input-output function, a fuzzy inference. In this way it is possible
to develop a fuzzy system embedded in an adaptive neural
network, without the extra effort to build and tune the
membership functions and the rule parameters. An example of
ANFIS application can be derived directly from the previous
example related to the induction motor rotor faults. We apply, as
fuzzy reasoning, a fust order Sugeno-style-inference, which is
more suitable for the ANFIS application. Such reasoning requires
rules with the IF part fuzzy and the THEN part crisp. Assuming
the same two inputs 11 and 12, the first rule of the previous fuzzy
system becomes:
I f ( I 1 is small) and (12 is small) thenfi =p14+qlI2+rl
where pi, 91, and rl are crisp parameters of the THEN part. The
other rules are similar. The adaptive network structure consists of
a multilayer feedforward network in which each node performs a
particular function (node function). To indicate the different
adaptive capabilities, usually an adaptive node is indicated by a
square. The adaptive neural network is trained by a supervised
learning. But in this case, differently from the classical
feedforward neural network architecture, the links only indicate
the flow direction of signals between nodes and no weights are
associated with the links. During the learning phase the updating
quantities are the parameters of the adaptive nodes.
To perform the features of the already defined Sugeno-Style fuzzy
system the adaptive neural network can be organized as shown in
Fig. 10.
I1
I2
Fig. 10 - Adaptive ANFIS architecture for rotor fault diagnostics
based on the sideband components 11and 12.
Layer 1, is associated with the membership function of the
linguistic variable (small, medium large) Ai for 11 and B, for 12.
The corresponding output specifies the membership grade of the
input. The parameters of the membership function pertain to the
parameter set. As the values of these parameters change, the
shape of the membership functions vary accordingly.
As discussed above, in the conventional !&zy approach the
parameters must be chosen by examining directly the fault cases
or the model results. This means that the neural network starts
 with a first attempt of membership functions, then automatically
constructs the needed membership functions by using an example
set. The other layers are devoted to the remaining functions of the
f k z y set, up to the last layer that computes the overall output f as
the summation of all incoming signals [34].
Thus an adaptive network has been constructed wluch is
functionally equivalent to a fuzzv mference, but without the effort
to tune the -rule parameters and the .membership h c t i o n
I
Some typical true fault events, that allow reduced operating
conditions of the drive Without involving the short circuits
protections, are:
transistor base drive open fault
Phase OPen at mchme
any motor a s m e t r y due to an internal fault.

As an example Fig. 11 shows the expenmental results referred to

parameters. This task is accomplished by the neural network
a machme open phase in comparison with the no fault
during the learning phase. Since the parameter set characterizes conditions. Fig. 1 1 a and b show the spectrum and instantaneous
the fuzzy system features, it can be concluded that in this case the values of main current and motor current related to the no fault
adaptive neural network is able to construct autonomously the condition. Fig. 11 c and d show the corresponding results in the
embedded fuzzy system. The authors have already showed in case of an open phase.
[46,48] the utilization of this interesting technique for rotor fault
detection and stator short circuit detection. It has to be
emphasized that this technique is very interesting because starting
.:
from examples, it requires a minimum a priori knowledge and
consequently can be utilized in order to design a diagnostic system
respecting the MCAI principle [34,49].

VI DRIVES FAULT DIAGNOSIS

If the induction machine is supplied by a frequency converter the
machine diagnostic system has to be combined with the fault
possibilities of the converter. To plan an integrated diagnostic
system monitoring an open-loop electric drive will be considered.
However, closed loop drives follow an unlike phlosophy, because
the control can be designed to realize a fault-tolerant system [50,
511.
As far as power converters for commercial applications of
electric drives are concerned, a relatively small number of
configurations exists. Therefore similar circuit topologies should
produce similar results for typical faults and hence it is possible
to study a diagnostic system able to operate regardless to
different manufacturers and ratings. Voltage Source Inverter
(VSI) type converters are now considered. To investigate
possible fault operations of such a converter, much work has
been carried out in recent years. The literature concems mostly
the classification and the analysis of true fault operations of
single components of electric systems [52, 531. The analytical
approach to reliability prediction, i.e. the preventive diagnostic,
on the contrary, is developed only regarding subsystems [6,7].
The results of the analysis are considered as the starting point to
study the monitoring and diagnostic system, that will follow the
system operating conditions detecting on-line abnormal
conditions. Obviously in multistage systems, the nodes chosen to
be parallel monitored should be limited, trading off between cost
and expected results. Therefore the monitoring strategy must be
suitably designed, and to this aim, correlation among the
practical fault set and the different variables should be found.
For VSI the scheme can be seen as a cascade of three
subsystems: an AC-DC converter, a DC-AC converter and the
induction motor
C)
The effects produced by typical faults on the input-output
variables of the subsystems must be analysed in order to
construct the rules for the knowledge-base of the diagnostic
system [54-571. Typical faults of a converter cause changes in
the waveform and consequently in the spectrum of the input-
output currents and voltages. Also in this case the spectrum
analysis is a fundamental tool for diagnostic purposes and every
non-characteristic component becomes a possible diagnostic
index. Therefore the methodologies already discussed for the
various motor faults can be extended to the supply converters.
Considering the usual drive protections and consequently the
available variables, the subset of monitoring nodes is constituted
by the input-output variables of the subsystems, i.e. :
Fig. 11 Experimental spectra and waveform of main supply
main supply currents current and output converter current in: a) and b) no fault
0 direct current and voltage of DC bus conditions, c) and d) loss of one motor phase.
DC-AC converter output currents (input motor currents).

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 Significant changes passing from the two situations are clearly
visible both in the instantaneous shapes and in the spectra.
Following the diagnostic philosophy already utilised for the
machine faults, the current spectrum anomalies introduced by
the converter faults can be assumed as robust indicators.
Obviously an efficient diagnostic system should give information
about the component’s incipient failures, whose early detection
can avoid catastrophic events. To this aim the parametric failures
of power switching components should be considered and the
goal of the diagnostic system becomes the detection of parameter
variations effects.
However, this task is dificult. In fact experimental and model-
based investigations show that if the more usual long-term
failures are considered in the switching components, i.e. the
related parameter variations, the input-output current and
voltages spectra are not effective fault indicators. No significant
changes can be distinguished between the healthy condition and
the parametric faulty conditions in the spectrum line amplitude
without considering its time variations [58].
The problem could be solved by applying trend analysis
techniques.
CONCLUSION
Th~spaper gives a general review of the recent developments in
the field of artificial intelligence based diagnostic systems in
electrical machines and drives. It covers the application of expert
systems, fizzy logic, artificial neural networks and combined
techniques as fuzzy neural networks. The advantages of using
artificial intelligence are shown. Some aspects related to the
application of minimum a priori knowledge are also discussed.
Although at present there are only limited number of practical
implementations, it is believed that in the future these techniques
will have a significant role in electrical dnve diagnostic systems;
in particular, fuzzy-neural diagnostic systems will become
extensively used.
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