2017 IEEE International Autumn Meeting on Power, Electronics and Computing (ROPEC 2017).

Ixtapa, Mexico

Half-Broken Rotor Bar Detection on IM by using

Sparse Representation under Different Load
Conditions
Carlos Morales-Perez∗ , Jose Rangel-Magdaleno∗ , Hayde Peregrina-Barreto† , and Juan Ramirez-Cortes∗
∗ Electronics Department
† Computer Science Department

National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE). Puebla, Mexico.
E-mail: {carlosj.morales, jrangel, hperegrina, jmram}@inaoep.mx

Abstract—Currently, the Induction Motor is widely used in
industry, due to its easy installation and operation. Induction
motors require a more reliable monitoring due to constant
operation increases the possibility of faults, for example, a broken
rotor bar fault. Early stage, broken bar is not easy to detect, and
its evolves is slow and quiet. In the most of cases, it is detected
when the fault is critical and other faults have appeared. Many
techniques have been proposed in the literature, but majority of
these performs analysis in frequency domain, applying additional
transformation or preprocessing methods. In this paper, a novel
methodology to detect a half-broken bar fault is proposed,
making use of the vibration signal from induction motor under
two fault conditions: healthy and half-broken bar; and three
load conditions: unloaded, half-loaded and three-fourths loaded.
The detection is possible due to the sparse representation of
the raw signal which is obtained and then evaluated by minimal
decomposition error criterion. In this way, preprocessing methods
are not needed, and the fault is detected early and directly. These
tests were developed in Matlab software, with vibration signals
from induction motors in steady state.
Keywords—Broken rotor bar, induction motor, raw signal,
signal classification, sparse representation, time domain.
I. I NTRODUCTION
In recent years the Induction Motors (IMs) has been widely
used in industry, due to its low cost, reliability, fast installation,
among other reasons. Due to its extensive use, this machine
has been an important production piece which requires high-
efficient maintenance programs, because non-programmed in-
terventions could generate time and economic losses. An
important fault is the Broken Rotor Bar (BRB) that generates
anomalies in the IM and involved systems. This fault can
be attributed to different causes (operating environments and
manufacturing defects included) and it should be dealt with
early on, otherwise more faults can be produced as: ruptures
in other bars, bearing faults, and in the worst of case, a totally
damage.
According BRB faults, recently many techniques for its
detection have been proposed. A commonly used technique
for its detection is the Motor Current Signal Analysis (MCSA)
[1], [2], [3], where the current signals from IM electrical
phases are processed and analyzed to find the fault. In addition,
MCSA is improved by using other techniques as Neural
Network [4], Mathematics Morphology [5], Empirical Mode
Decomposition Analysis [6], to name a few. Besides, Discrete
Wavelets Transform (DWT) [7], Extended Kalman Filter [8],
Counter-Current Braking Method [9] are using to perform
the detection. But, current signals are not the only ones
used, others such as Air-Gap Torque Analysis [10], Vibration
Signals Analysis (VSA)[11], [12], or Infrared Data Analysis
[13] can also be applied. All these techniques have found the
fault in the frequency domain, and have been involved the
usage of preprocessing and transformation methods.
On the other hand, the signals decomposition has been
widely studied by Compressive Sensing Reconstruction (CSR)
field [14], [15], where its accuracy has been proven. Sparse
Representation (SR) [16] is the technique use in this perfor-
mance, which it is not only effective to accomplish decom-
position of signals, but also it can be used to perform signals
classification as proven in [17], where the information obtained
by sparse representation of signals is evaluated and classified
with high success. This way, by performing decomposition of
signals from an IM, helps to achieve a correct detection of the
fault.
In this paper, a novel methodology to accomplish half-
broken bar (HBB) detection is proposed. It consists by ob-
taining vibration signals from IM in an steady state and under
different load conditions: unloaded, half loaded and three-
fourths loaded; then, the SR of the raw signal (in time domain)
is obtained. Thus, this information is evaluated and finally the
detection is performed. This is possible due to the SR allowing
to detect particular features in the signal decomposed, in this
case, HBB fault. In order to do this, a criterion of minimal
error decomposition is used to evaluate the SR information,
allowing the HBB detection with about 94% of success.
II. S PARSE REPRESENTATION OF A SIGNAL
Actually, the SR of signals is widely used in the signal
analysis (SA) due to this helps to represent signals in a linear
combination of a small set of elemental signals from a specific
dictionary (1).
m

x = Dα + r = αi di + r (1)
i=1

978-1-5386-0819-7/17/$31.00 2017
c IEEE
 2017 IEEE International Autumn Meeting on Power, Electronics and Computing (ROPEC 2017). Ixtapa, Mexico
where x ∈ Rn×1 is an input signal with n samples, D =
{d1 , d2 , ..., dm } ∈ Rn×m is a dictionary with m elemental
signals (atoms), α ∈ Rm×1 is the sparse vector that provides
the weight for each elementary signal from the dictionary, r =
x − Dα ∈ Rn×1 is a residual of representation, αi ∈ R
and di ∈ Rn×1 is the i − th sparse coefficient and atom
respectively. In this way, x can be represented in atoms from
D contained in α (see Fig. 1).
 
III. M ETHODOLOGY
This methodology uses vibration signals by obtaining
a MEMs-based triaxial accelerometer with ±2/±6 g user-
selectable full scale vibration primary element (VE), installed
on IM. The signals are converted to digital format by a 12-
bits four-channel analog-to-digital converter ADS7841 with a
200 kHz conversion rate. Then, these raw signals are sent
to a computer by a MAX3243 transceiver for digital data
communication through RS-232 interface. Finally, the signals

 
are saved in the computer where the Signal Decomposition


 

    
  Analysis (SDA) will be applied.
 

 

 
         








(a) (b)
    



 

   
 
(a) (b)
 
Fig. 2. Simulate damage made to the rotor: (a) healthy; and (b) HBB.
 
The raw signals consists in the acquisition of the vibration
 
         
signal on the x-axis (parallel to rotor-axis) during one second






 with 3200 samples, as depicted in Fig. 3. The VE were
(c) (d) installed in three 1-hp IMs with different conditions. Damage
to the rotor bar was made by a milling machine to simulate the
Fig. 1. Comparison between a signal with 512 samples, and its sparse HBB fault (see Fig. 2). Three loads conditions were applied:
representation with: (a) 4 atoms; (b) 8 atoms; (c) 12 atoms; and (d) 16 atoms.
unloaded, half loaded, and three-fours loaded.
The aim of SR is to provide a version of the original
signal with fewest number of atoms. So, a high-efficient 
representation is found when the residual (r) is minimal. Thus,
the optimization problem for SR is formulated as 




argminα0 s.t. r22 → 0 (2) 

α
In the literature, algorithms have been proposed to perform 
the optimization problem presented above: Basis Pursuit (BP)
[18], Matching Pursuit (MP) [19], Orthogonal Matching Pur- 
suit (OMP) [20], [21] or other greedy algorithms. Moreover,
SR not only depends on the implemented algorithm, it also de- 
pends of the bases contained in the dictionary used to perform
the representation. Hereby, the process to obtain or train the 
dictionaries is a discussion topic in the literature. A proposed     
solution is a process named Dictionary Learning (DL) [17].



It is performed by K-Singular Value Decomposition (K-SVD)
algorithm [22], [23], [24], among others. This process focuses Fig. 3. Example vibration signal obtained from VE installed on IM.
in the optimization problem stated as follow:
To accomplish the detection based on this methodology,
minX − Dα22 s.t. α0 ≤ m (3) Dictionary Training Process (DTP) must be applied before the
α,D
SDA as exposed below.
where X ∈ Rn×M is a set of M training signals with
particular features. K-SVD allows adapting an overcomplete A. Dictionary Training Process
dictionary (D) to the features contained in the set of signals To apply the SDA process, DL is needed (see Fig. 4). This
(X). On this manner, (1) can be applied and (2) is fulfilled. consists in:
 2017 IEEE International Autumn Meeting on Power, Electronics and Computing (ROPEC 2017). Ixtapa, Mexico

1) Take a set of raw signals (X) from IMs with particular
features.
2) Put the taken set into an algorithm to train a specific
dictionary (D) [17].
3) Save and label the obtained dictionary for future uses.
signal, only one dictionary will accomplish a better decom-
position than the remainder. In other words, each dictionary
has been trained with particular features (fault conditions),
so that the signal is better decomposed with the dictionary
that contains the fault. The SR af a signal provides important
information that can be evaluated by a criterion based on
the obtained decomposition differences (even if these are
be minimal) between the used dictionaries [17], to finally
performed a successful classification.
The DTP was performed with sets of 150 signals for each
fault condition (see Table I). In fact, 900 signals were used,
and the dictionaries obtained were 6 matrices of 3200 × 11200
each one.
Additionally, 100 signals per condition were used to accom-
plish the SDA process, and the load conditions were the same
as in the DTP.

Fig. 4. Dictionary Training Process proposed to perform the detection. TABLE I

V IBRATION S IGNALS PER CONDITION .
This process is executed for each fault condition and load Training Testing
Fault Total
condition. The training process is executed only once because A B C A B C
the SDA process uses the same dictionary (or dictionaries) in 0 150 150 150 100 100 100 750
1 150 150 150 100 100 100 750
every representation. Total 300 300 300 200 200 200 1,500

B. Signal Decomposition Analysis

Once the dictionaries have been obtained, the SDA process
based on SR can be applied (see Fig. 5). This methodology
consists in:
1) Take a raw signal from the IM to diagnose.
2) Perform the decomposition by a greedy algorithm.
3) Evaluate the information obtained by a criterion.
4) Give a diagnosis.
Table I contains the distribution of the used number of
signals that perform this work. Letters A, B, and C are
used to denote Unloaded, Half loaded and Three-fours loaded
conditions respectively; and the numbers 0 and 1 for Healthy
and HBB condition respectively.
This work (as in the beginning was mentioned) is based
on obtains the SR of a signal from specifics dictionaries as
depicted above.

 
  

    





 

 

 

 
     








(a) (b)

Fig. 6. Zoom of reconstruction of a vibration signal from a IM with HBB and

Fig. 5. Signal Decomposition Process proposed to perform the detection.
The executed algorithm must decompose the input signal
(x) from contained atoms (di ) in a specific dictionary (D),
giving information to detect the fault.
IV. E XPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The SDA can be applied to develop a signal classifier due
to the decomposition of signals (SR) is better improved when
the dictionary provides an accurate bases (atoms). If different
dictionaries are provided to perform the decomposition of a
Half loaded, with: (a) Healthy condition Dictionary; and (b) HBB condition
Dictionary.
In Fig. 6, the reconstruction of a signal with two specifics
dictionaries are shown. The differences are not detected to the
naked eye because they are minimal. But these differences can
be evaluated by criteria, and getting a success classification.
Therefore, in this paper is used a criterion based on the
minimal decomposition error, due to the signal group that
is determined by the dictionary that gives the best bases to
decomposition, or
 2017 IEEE International Autumn Meeting on Power, Electronics and Computing (ROPEC 2017). Ixtapa, Mexico

In future works, this methodology will be implemented

r g  on FPGA, also the reduction of time-consumption of the
F = argmin|eg | s.t. eg = (4)
g={0,1} x algorithm will be researched.
where g = {0, 1} are the dictionaries: 0 for healthy and
1 for HBB types; and  is the -norm. In the case of the ACKNOWLEDGMENT
signal depicted in Fig. 6, the criterion was applied and the The author Carlos Morales-Perez thanks to Red de
results were e0 = 0.6913 and e1 = 0.6691. So, (4) determined Inteligencia Computacional Aplicada (RedICA-CONACyT,
that the decomposed signal belongs to HBB group: a success Mexico) for the support to attend the conference, and to
classification. The load condition of the dictionaries was National Council for Science and Technology (CONACyT,
selected manually. Mexico) for the support to the postgraduate studies in the
National Institute for Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics
TABLE II (INAOE, Mexico).
C LASSIFICATION PERCENTAGES .

Success with 1 Success with 2 R EFERENCES

Fault
A B C A B C
0 100% 86% 96% 100% 87% 96%
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