Effectiveness of Vibration and Current Monitoring in detecting Broken Rotor Bar and
Bearing Faults in an Induction Motor
T. CH. Anil Kumar Gurmeet Singh
Reliability Engineering Centre Reliability Engineering Centre
IIT Kharagpur IIT Kharagpur
Kharagpur, West Bengal, India Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
aniltulluri.1983@iitkgp.ac.in singh@iitkgp.ac.in
Abstract— Induction motors are widely used prime-movers in
most of the industrial applications due to its high efficiency,
rugged design and easy control. Reliability and availability of
induction motors is one of the required parameters in order to
reduce down-time of the entire rotating machinery system.
Vibration analysis and motor current signature analysis (MCSA)
are widely used diagnostic techniques for the detection of various
mechanical and electrical faults in induction motors. Major
limitation of the MCSA is its inability in detection of faults in
induction motors at no load condition. This paper addresses this
limitation and proposes a suitable technique for more effective
fault detection of an induction motor using vibration spectrum at
no load condition. The results have been experimentally tested
and validated in an electrical fault simulator set-up for broken
rotor bar and bearing faults.
Keywords— Broken rotor bar, Bearing faults, MCSA,
Vibration analysis, Fault diagnosis.
I. INTRODUCTION
Induction motors are subjected to various dynamic,
thermal, mechanical and electrical load conditions. These
varied load conditions leads to gradual wear in the induction
motors. In general, faults in the induction motors are
categorised as mechanical and electrical types. Mechanical
faults are of bearing faults, eccentric rotor, soft-foot,
looseness, rotor-stator rub; misalignment etc., whereas
electrical faults are categorized as broken rotor bar, air-gap
eccentricity, inter-turn short, insulation failure, and shaft
induced voltage etc. Fig. 1 highlights the survey results of
failure distribution in induction motors [1]. Papers have been
published to detect various faults in induction motors using
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of vibration and current signals
for the detection of broken rotor bar and bearing faults in
induction motors [2-13].
Shaft or Couplings
2.4%
Rotor bars/rotor rings
4.7%
Not Specified
10.4%
External Device Bearings
15.6% 51.1%
Stator Windings
15.8%
Fig. 1. Induction motor component failure distribution.
978-1-5090-0128-6/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
V. N. A. Naikan
Head, Reliability Engineering Centre
IIT Kharagpur
Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
naikan@hijli.iitkgp.ernet.in
Time – frequency domain techniques such as discrete
wavelet transform [14], higher order spectrums [15] are used
for the detection of these types of faults in induction motor. A
survey on the application of time-frequency characteristics of
the motor condition parameters such as current, voltage,
electromagnetic torque and speed for fault detection is
discussed in [16]. Application of Ant clustering technique
using time-domain features is also reported in the literature for
the detection of broken rotor bar fault under varied load
conditions [17].
As stated in the literature, it is very difficult to detect faults
such as broken rotor bar and bearing defects in the induction
motors at no load condition using phase current spectrum [18,
19]. The focus of the present work is to develop effective
methods to diagnose any incipient fault present in the
induction motor due to poor manufacturing and faults induced
due to mishandling of the motor while in transportation by the
supplier before installation. Also, it is always not possible to
load the machine to its desired load capacity during
maintenance in the workshop test bench or a new motor for
inspection at site.
In general, induction motors are installed either in delta or
star connection according to their applications. In delta
connection motor draws high current compared to that of in
star connection. This paper also deals with the effect of star
and delta connections on the fault diagnosis of induction
motor at no load condition, using current and vibration
signatures. The next section presents the details of broken
rotor bar and bearing fault detection in an induction motor
using current and vibration signals.
II. INDUCTION MOTOR FAULT DIAGNOSIS
In general, nature and type of faults present in induction
motor are detected by observing the location and amplitude
levels of side-bands present around supply frequency and its
harmonics.
A. Spectral Analysis
It is also known as frequency domain analysis. In general,
spectral analysis is carried by observing the change in
amplitude levels in the FFT of raw signals for fault detection.
1. Broken Rotor Bar Detection: In induction motors,
broken rotor bar can be detected by observing the
side-band (fbrb) amplitudes around supply frequency
 and its harmonics in current spectrum using the
relation [10-13, 20],
= (1 ± 2 ) (1)
where, fbrb : Fault frequency related to broken rotor
bar, fs : supply frequency, k : integer, s: slip of the
motor.
In vibration spectrum, any fault related to rotor can be
detected by monitoring the synchronous speed (Ns)
(or) rotor bar pass frequency (RBPF) given by [21],
120 Experiments have been carried out at no load condition for
= (2)
= ( × ) (3)
where, fs : supply frequency, p : number of poles in
motor, n : number of rotor bars.
2. Bearing Fault Detection: In general, faults in rolling
ball bearings are classified as general roughness and
localized defects. Generalized roughness in bearings
may be present due to the gradual wear and it is
difficult to detect due to its non-stationery nature.
Localized defects may be single or multi point defects
and may be present either on any bearing part such as
outer race, inner race, rolling element, cage assembly
and may be on combined parts. These defects can be
detected by monitoring the abrupt change in the
corresponding bearing frequencies (Eqs. 4-7) as
mentioned below in vibration spectrum [7-9, 22]:
= 1−
2 No. of rotor bars
= 1+
2
= 1−
= 1− (7)
2
where, fbpfo : outer race fault frequency, fbpfi : inner
race fault frequency, frf : rolling element fault
frequency, fcf : cage fault frequency, nb : no. of
rolling elements, f : rotational frequency, d : diameter
of rolling element, D : pitch diameter of rolling
element bearing, θ : contact angle.
In current spectrum, localised bearing faults can be
detected by observing the side-band (fbfc ) amplitudes
around supply harmonics using the relation [7-9, 22],
= ± (8)
where, fs : supply frequency, fc : any characteristic
bearing vibration frequency, k : integer.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP AND PROCEDURE
Experimental set-up as shown in Fig. 2 consists of three
5hp (3-ϕ) induction motors that are driven by direct online
supply (DOL) with delta and star connections separately. Out
of the three induction motors one is in healthy state (M1) and
the other two are seeded with one broken rotor bar fault (M2)
and outer race bearing fault (M3). Details of the motors are
presented in Table 1. ICP accelerometer and Fluke –i1000s
current probe are used to acquire vibration and phase current
data from the motor respectively. OROS data analyzer is used
for raw signal acquisition.
each motor driven under both delta and star connections at
DOL supply. Samples of vibration and current signals are
captured continuously for the duration of ‘10s’ with the
sampling rate of 16.384 kS/s. After acquiring the current and
vibration signals of each motor FFT’s have been plotted by
post processing of time signals using ‘MATLAB 2014a’
software.
Fig. 2. Experimental Set-up
Table 1. Technical specifications of the induction motor.
Parameter Value (Unit)
Power 3.7 KW
Voltage 415 ± 10% V
Current 7.5 A
(4) No. of Poles 4
26
Drive-end Bearing SKF 6206 2z/C3
(5)
(6) The next section deals with the discussions of the
experimental results to find out of vibration and current
monitoring which one is effective in detecting the presence of
broken rotor bar and bearing fault in an induction motor. Also,
the effect of delta or star connection in fault diagnosis of an
induction motor is also carried through using the FFT of
vibration and current signal.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
A. Spectral Analysis
Fig. (3 and 4) represents the current spectrum of the
healthy, broken rotor bar and bearing fault motor driven with
delta and star connections at DOL supply respectively. It is
clear that, indication of any fault in respective current
spectrums is not observed as per the available literature. Fig.
(5 and 6) represents the vibration spectrum of the three motors
driven with delta and star connections at DOL supply
respectively. From the Fig. (5 and 6) we can easily identify
the presence of bearing fault clearly due to the increased
vibration amplitudes at higher frequencies when compared to
that of other two motors.
 Fig. (3a) Fig. (4b)

Fig. (3b)
Fig. (4c)
Fig. 4. Current Spectrum of 4a.) Healthy 4b.) Broken Rotor Bar and 4c.)
Bearing Fault motors driven in STAR connection..

Fig. (3c)
Fig. 3. Current Spectrum of 3a.) Healthy 3b.) Broken Rotor Bar and 3c.)
Bearing Fault motors driven in DELTA connection.
Fig. (5a)

Fig. (4a)

Fig. (5b)
 It is clear that increase in the vibration amplitudes at 2nd
rotational frequency harmonic and at first harmonic of rotor
bar pass frequency (RBPF) and at twice the DOL supply
frequency (FL) from RBPF in the frequency range of (600-
800) Hz are observed for the motor with broken rotor bar
against healthy motor. Increase in vibration amplitudes has
been observed at the first four harmonics of bearing outer race
frequency (BPFO) for the motor with bearing fault. From the
above observations, it is clear that through vibration spectrum
we can easily detect the presence of broken rotor bar and
bearing faults present in an induction motor when compared to
that of current spectrum at no load condition.

Fig. (5c) V. CONCLUSIONS

Fig. 5. Vibration Spectrum of 5a.) Healthy 5b.) Broken Rotor Bar and
5c.) Bearing Fault motors driven in DELTA connection.
Fig. (6a)
Fig. (6b)
Fig. (6c)
Fig. 6. Vibration Spectrum of 6a.) Healthy 6b.) Broken Rotor Bar and
6c.) Bearing Fault motors driven in STAR connection.
From the above discussions, finally we can conclude that
vibration spectrum (FFT) is very effective in detecting the
broken rotor bar and bearing faults of induction motor under
no load condition whether the motor is delta or star connected.
On the other hand, current spectrum fails even to identify the
presence of the seeded faults i.e. healthy and faulty current
spectrums look alike even the motor is delta or star connected.
Also, it can be concluded that a minor decrease in the
vibration amplitudes at fault frequencies has been observed
when the motors are connected in star connection.
The proposed methodology can be effectively used for
quality control of induction motors and also for carrying out
fault diagnosis during regular maintenance, inspection and
installation. This shows the effectiveness of vibration
spectrum over current spectrum in early detection of broken
rotor bar and bearing faults in an induction motor at no load
condition.
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