Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 620689, 14 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2011/620689
Research Article

A Novel Technique for Rotor Bar Failure Detection in Single-Cage Induction Motor Using FEM and MATLAB/SIMULINK

Seyed Abbas Taher1 and Majid Malekpour2

1Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Kashan, Kashan 87317-51167, Iran
2Sama Technical and Vocational Training College, Islamic Azad University, Yasuj Branch, Yasuj, Iran

Received 14 June 2011; Revised 10 September 2011; Accepted 12 September 2011

Academic Editor: Wei-Chiang Hong

Copyright © 2011 Seyed Abbas Taher and Majid Malekpour. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

In this article, a new fault detection technique is proposed for squirrel cage induction motor (SCIM) based on detection of rotor bar failure. This type of fault detection is commonly carried out, while motor continues to work at a steady-state regime. Recently, several methods have been presented for rotor bar failure detection based on evaluation of the start-up transient current. The proposed method here is capable of fault detection immediately after bar breakage, where a three-phase SCIM is modelled in finite element method (FEM) using Maxwell2D software. Broken rotor bars are then modelled by the corresponding outer rotor impedance obtained by GA, thereby presenting an analogue model extracted from FEM to be simulated in a flexible environment such as MATLAB/SIMULINK. To improve the failure recognition, the stator current signal was analysed using discrete wavelet transform (DWT).