Paper accepted for presentation at 2003 IEEE Bologna Power Tech Conference, June 23th-26th, Bologna, Italy

Broken bars detection in an induction motor

by pattern recognition
R. Casimir *, E. Boutleux *, G. Clerc ** and F. Chappuis *
Centre de Gnie Electrique de Lyon
*

**

Ecole Centrale de Lyon

University of Lyon 1
Avenue Guy de Collongue 36, Ecully, 69134, FRANCE
Tel: 33 4 72 18 60 97
Fax: 33 4 78 43 37 17
Email: Roland.Casimir@eea.ec-lyon.fr

Abstract-- The necessity to insure a continuous and safety

operation for induction motors, involves preventive maintenance
programs with fault detection techniques. This paper presents
the application of a pattern recognition approach in order to
detect broken bars in an induction motor. The aim is to identify
the operating conditions according to the level of load. For this
purpose, only electrical measurements are used. Some time or
frequencydependent parameters, which are relevant for fault
detection, are described. They are used to build up a pattern
vector. This vector is represented by a point and the operating
condition of the induction motor are represented by classes in the
space. As the dimension of the space is greater than three, the
classes and their evolutions can be visualized after a principal
component analysis. Then a decision system, based on this
signature and the knearest neighbors rule, is proposed.
Index Terms-- Broken bars, diagnosis, Induction motor, knearest
neighbors rule, pattern recognition, principal components
analysis.

I. NOMENCLATURE
Fs
s

Supply frequency
Per unit slip

Is

Stator current vector

iD , iQ

Current Park's vector components

v D , vQ

Voltage Park's vector components

Vd , I d

Positive sequence components of voltages and currents

P, Q, S

Active, reactive and apparent powers

The pattern vector
Pattern vector component

x
xj

,
N

m
2

Classes
Number of samples in the training data set
Center of gravity vector
Variance vector
Matrix representing the N sample patterns

Variance-covariance matrix
Eigenvectors matrix
Eigenvalues diagonal matrix

II. INTRODUCTION

wo kinds of faults occur on induction motors: mechanical

or electrical ones. Measurement of signals such as
currents, voltages, speed, vibrations and temperature, can

0-7803-7967-5/03/$17.00 2003 IEEE

provide relevant information about faults. Vibration analysis

is widely used to detect mechanical faults [1]. Nevertheless,
accelerometers are expensive, not easy to implement, and do
not allow electrical failure prevention. This paper deals with
the diagnosis of broken bars fault by means of a pattern
recognition method, based on current and voltage
measurements only. In order to build up the pattern vector,
which will be considered as the motor signature, statistical
parameters are extracted from the current and voltage signal
analysis. Those parameters are calculated from the current
Park's vectors, the positive sequence components and the
current and voltage spectrum. Then a pattern recognition
approach based on the knearest neighbors rule, is
introduced. The aim is to identify the operating conditions
(faulty or not) according to the level of load. In fact, this
decision rule uses distances calculations in the decision space.
Two kinds of distance metrics are studied: the Euclidean
distance and the Mahalanobis distance. The diagnostic results
obtained in both cases are compared.
III. FAULT SIGNATURES
Electrical fault identification can be performed by means
of current spectral analysis [2].
For the rotor faults (broken bars), the stator current is
modulated in amplitude by the slip frequency during working
conditions under load. The characteristic frequencies (due to
the fault), provided by current spectrum analysis [2] [3], can
be found around the supply frequency at:
f = Fs (1 2ns)

(1)

where Fs is the supply frequency, s the per unit slip and n

is an integer.
Nevertheless, these relevant components are not available
at no-load or very low load operation, since s equals 0 and
there is no electromagnetic transfer. Thus, it is necessary to
find signatures that could help the identification of the fault
despite the level of load.
IV. THE DIAGNOSIS PROCEDURE
Instead of working with accurate frequency line
amplitudes, another approach, which is based on relevant
parameter calculation, is proposed. Those parameters are used
to build up the pattern vector.

A.

Pattern Recognition and Diagnosis

Equation (4.1) gives the apparent power, S, expression:

In order to identify the fault according to the load level, a

pattern recognition approach is proposed.
Pattern recognition (PR) methods have been successfully
used for system functional states monitoring [6]. The aim of
statistical PR methods is to classify new observed patterns by
comparison with prototypes. Thus these procedures are based
on measurements.
For diagnosis purpose, a set of d parameters
{x1 , x 2 , ,x j ,x d } , obtained through data analysis, is used

to define the pattern vector, x , such as x = x1

x j x d

Assuming this vector is relevant for fault detection, the

functional states of the system are represented by classes in a
d-dimensional space. The L classes

1,

2 , ...

correspond to geometric areas in the space. Because of the

presence of noise in the observations, a class, representing the
operating conditions, is made of a cluster of points (and not
only one point).
Making a decision consists in determining which class,
among the L possible classes l (l = 1L), an unknown
pattern x must be associated with.
The PR method is made in two steps. The first one, called
training step, consists in determining the representation space
(the pattern vector), the decision space (the classes) and in
developing a decision rule. The second one, called decision
step, consists in associating an unknown pattern with one of
the defined classes, according to the decision rule.
B.

I s = i D 2 + iQ 2

(2)

The researched parameter is the standard deviation of I s ,

named

Let ms be the I s

mean value. For M points, the parameter

( ( ) )

can be expressed as follow:

1 M
I s k ms
M k=1

1
2

(3)

Two other parameters are determined from active and

reactive powers (P and Q respectively), which are calculated
with voltages and currents Parks components [5]:
P = v D i D + vQ iQ
Q = vQ i D v D iQ

(4)

(4.1)

Reactive and active powers are normalized by the RMS

value of apparent power modulus. Their mean values, " md "
and " mq " , are calculated for each acquisition.
Lastly, two more parameters are extracted from the
positive sequence of the stator currents and voltages
(respectively id and vd ). Considering the real parts of these
components analyzed in the frequency-domain two
parameters have been considered. The first one is the current
energy. For M points in the spectrum, it is expressed as:
E=

2
1 M

I (k )
M k =1 d

(5)

Considering the fast Fourier transforms, I d (f) and Vd (f)

of id and vd

respectively, the direct impedance Zd is

calculated. It is the ratio between the fundamental

components of Vd and I d .
Zd =

Vd ( f = Fs )
I d ( f = Fs )

(6)

These different parameters, which are summarized in Table

I, are used to build up the pattern vector and to determine the
decision system based on pattern recognition approach.

Pattern Vector Determination

Five parameters are extracted.

The first one is extracted with the help of Park's vector
approach [4] that is based on a two-dimensional
representation of the three-phase components of stator
current. As a function of main phase-variables (iA, iB, iC), the
current Park's vector components are called iD and iQ. Thus,
we can write:

S = P + j Q

x1

TABLE I
PARAMETERS SUMMARY
x2
md

x3
mq

x4
E

x5
Zd

In the following section this method is applied to broken

bars detection.
V. BROKEN BARS DETECTION
The asynchronous motor used for experimental
investigation is a three-phase induction motor, 50 Hz, 4 poles,
5.5 kW, 11.4 A and 1440 rpm. The healthy squirrel cage rotor
is made of 28 bars. Three bars have been broken in another
similar rotor. For each functional state, 15 acquisitions of 10
s, at 5 kHz, have been made in order to check the signature
robustness (10 for the training step and 5 for the decision
step).
The total number of operating conditions is 10, five for the
sound rotor and the five others for the rotor having three
broken bars (at no load and at 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of
the nominal load).
A.

The Training Step

The training data set is made of 100 samples, 10 per

operating conditions.
From the 5 parameters obtained in section 4 (Table I), the
pattern vector, x , becomes x = ( x1 x 2 x 5 ) . The functional
T

states of the system are represented by classes in a 5dimensional space and each pattern vector x k (k = 1N;
and N = 100) is represented by a point.
As the 5-dimensional representation space is determined, a
procedure called Principal Components Analysis [7] (PCA)
is applied in order to project and visualize the different
classes in a 2 or 3-dimensional subspace.
The principle of the PCA is developed in the following
section.
1)

whose dimension equals d. Nevertheless, for each vector, the

d components are not homogeneous. So the data are
normalized by the following way:
As x is a d1 pattern vector, then the mean vector for N
such pattern vectors is
1 N

...

(7.6)

d'

...

where 1 > 2 > ... > d

The first d' vectors obtained will define the d'-dimensional

Principal Components Analysis principle

The aim is to determine a subspace whose dimension d' is

less than d and, which represent the data set with a minimum
of information lost. Let {x1 , x 2 , ... ,x N } be the set of N vectors

subspace. The vector X jproj whose N components are the

th

projections of N vectors x k on the vector Vj is called j

principal component. The new matrix, whose dimension is
Nd' , and which contains the vectors y j is

X proj = X1proj

X 2proj

Xd'proj = X t V '

(7.7)

with,

m=

N k =1

xk

(7.1)

and their variances are defined by

2

j =

1 N

x kj m j
N k =1

(7.2)

xk - m

For the following study, the data are considered as being

normalized.
The subspace is defined by the eigenvectors of the
variance-covariance matrix

1
xk x kt
N k =1

(7.4)

The variance-covariance matrix is dd , real and

symmetric. Its diagonal elements equal one (for normalized
data) and, its off-diagonal elements represent the correlation
between two components of the vector.
The eigenvectors of the variance-covariance matrix are
d1 vectors Vj such that Vj = j Vj . The eigenvalues j

are d scalars that satisfy

jI

= 0 (I is the identity matrix).

After ordering the eigenvectors by decreasing magnitude of

the corresponding eigenvalues, the eigenvectors matrix and
diagonal eigenvalues matrix can be written respectively by:

V = V1 V2

... Vd' ... Vd

(7.5)

(7.8)

Principal Components Analysis results

For d' equals 2 or 3, the principal components analysis

(PCA) allows to visualize the evolution of the different
classes. However, the visualization of the data set must be
made with a minimum lost of information. Thus the
representation quality can be estimated by the following
criterion.
d'

(7.3)

V2 ... Vd'

2)

where j =1 d
Then the normalized vector components are:

x k norm =

V ' = V1

j=1
d
j=1

j
(7.9)

The more this criterion is close to 1 the best is the

representation quality in the subspace.
Figures 1.a and 1.b show the different classes in the best
two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces obtained from
the PCA. Their evolutions according to the level of load can
be followed ( 1 ... 5 and 1 ... 5 are respectively the
classes for the healthy rotor and the 3 broken bars one, from
almost 0% to 100% of the nominal load).
The criterion of representation quality equals 99.13 % and
99.61 % for the two-dimensional and three-dimensional
visualizations respectively.
The eigenvalues and their contributions are summarized in
table 2.
According to the results obtained, a two-dimensional
representation is sufficient to visualize the different classes.
However, the 3-D representation allows to see that the classes
2 and 2 are separated.

TABLE II
CONTRIBUTION OF THE EIGENVALUES
eigenvalues

percentage

4.4414

89.73

89.73

0.4652

9.4

99.13

0.0243

0.49

99.61

0.0140

0.28

99.89

Cumulated percentage :

0.0052

B.

0.11

table 1) is relevant and have a contribution in the

classification.

-0.42

0.59

-0.07

0.65

-0.16

0.46

-0.28

-0.19

0.65

0.49

-0.45

-0.41

-0.79

-0.033

-0.073

V=

(7.10)

1/ 2

The eigenvectors, represented by the matrix V (7.10), can

also be studied. Their components (in column), which are
defined in [ 1, + 1] , justify that each parameter (defined in

The decision rule is based on distance measurements. The

distances between a sample x u and the training sample
patterns are defined by (8.1), (8.2). Equation (8.1) is the
classical Euclidean distance whereas (8.2) is called
Mahalanobis distance [8] since the last one requires the
inverse of the variance-covariance matrix (7.4)

dE ( xu , xk ) =

100

The Decision Step

( xu

xk ) ( x u x k )

( xu

xk )

(8.1)

1/ 2

d M ( xu , x k ) =

-1

( xu x k )

(8.2)

The advantage of the Mahalanobis distance is that the

dispersion of the data set is taken into account. The distance
choice can have an influence on the classification result. Thus
to make this choice, the shape of the classes must be a priori
known, with the help of the PCA. The following section
presents a classification example (on simulated data) after
comparing the distance measurements results.

-0.42

-0.62

0.56

0.31

-0.15

0.47

-0.13

-0.13

0.20

-0.84

Note that this matrix is an orthogonal one and so its norm

equals 1.

75 %

3
3

25 %

4
100 %

50 %

Evolution of the load

2
1

5
0 %

Fig. 1b PCA result: the different classes, and their evolutions according to
the level of load, represented in the three-dimensional subspace (healthy
rotor , 3 broken bars o).

1)
Fig. 1a PCA result: the different classes, and their evolutions according to
the level of load, represented in the two-dimensional subspace (healthy rotor
, 3 broken bars o).

According to fig. 1a and 1.b, one can see that the classes
(representing the two states) move with the level of load.
Therefore, the first conclusion is that the different operating
conditions of the induction can be identified.
During the training step, each pattern has been affected to
one of the known classes. A decision rule based on the k
nearest neighbors is developed in order to affect unknown
patterns in the classes.

Comparison of the distance measurements

Fig. 2 is an illustration of the distance measurement

between two points ( x1 and x 2 ) and the centers of gravity of
two classes. Comparing these distances can help to make the
decision. For both points, the two kinds of distances (8.1, 8.2)
are applied. The aim is to decide which class x1 and x 2
would belong to, according to the distance choice. The
calculation is summarized in table 3.
The Euclidean distance between both points and the first

class is the same but as d E x1 , m 2

d E x 2 , m1

> d E x1 , m1

and

) > d ( x , m ) , one can decide that x1 belongs to

E

the first class and x 2 belongs to the second class.

TABLE III
DISTANCE MEASUREMENTS RESULT

m1
0.0073

( )
(x ,m )
(x ,m )
(x ,m )

d M x1 , m i
dM
dE
dE

a)

The ambiguity reject deals with patterns that could belong

decision

m2
0.0219

The ambiguity reject

equally to several classes: x u is really assigned to

First class

only if

more than k' among its k nearest neighbors belong to

0.0183

0.0074

0.0099

0.0104

0.0099

0.0088

Second
class
First class
Error risk
Second
class

, else

x u is rejected. With k' equals k/2.

b)

However, d E x1 , m 2 is not really greater than d E x1 , m1 .

The difference is clearly made with the Mahalanobis distance.
The classification result for the decision step will be
presented in both cases of distance calculation.

The distance reject

The distance reject is applied to patterns situated far from

high-density areas. In other words, the distance between an
unknown pattern x u and its assigned class must be less than a
defined threshold. For our study, the distance reject threshold
is defined with the help of the training set:

Assume that x u is assigned to the class

and let

, of

Nc samples, be the closest class to

the Nc patterns of

l,

l.

The distance between

( x k c , k = 1Nc) and

are

calculated (9.1)

m2

x2

) (

d x k c ,m l = x k c m l

xk c m l

12

(9.1)

is either the identity matrix or the inverse of the variancecovariance matrix (8.1) (8.2).
Then the distance reject rule is:

x1

m1

xu is rejected if d xk ,m l > Max d xk c ,m l

k = 1,Nc

- Else xu belongs to l .
Figure 3 is an illustration of these two kinds of reject.

Fig. 2 Classification
measurements.

2)

after

Euclidean

and

Mahalanobis

distances

mc

Application to the diagnosis

Instead of testing the distances between the unknown

patterns and the centers of gravity of the classes, another
approach called knearest neighbors rule is proposed.
The testing data set is made of 50 samples, 5 per operating
conditions.
Consider the L classes

1,

2,

...

ml

and the set

of N sample patterns represented by the matrix X (where

X = ( x1 x 2 ..., x N ) ) whose classification is a priori known.
Now let x u denotes an unknown incoming pattern. The
distances between x u and the training sample patterns are
calculated (8.1), (8.2).
Then the aim is to classify x u in the best represented class
among its knearest neighbors (i.e. the k smallest distance
values). k must be less than the number of pattern in the
classes.
In order to reduce the error of classification, two rejects
options [9], that allow avoiding the systematic classification
of unknown patterns, are defined.

Fig. 3. Decision step leading to the classification (a), the ambiguity reject
(with almost the same number of neighbors in both classes) (b), and the
distance reject (c)

The results obtained for k =110 are given in table 4 and

5 for the two kinds of distances. Of course, the ambiguity
reject, as it was defined, has no signification for k = 1.
According to the results obtained, the number of samples
misclassified before reject options is less important in the
case of Mahalanobis distance than in the case of Euclidean
distance (for the same value of k). The main reason is that the

particular dispersion of the classes (Fig.1a and 1.b) is taken

into account in the first approach.
TABLE IV
CLASSIFICATION RESULT (ON 50 UNKNOWN PATTERNS) WITH THE
MAHALANOBIS DISTANCE

Number of samples
misclassified Before
reject options
4

Number of
samples rejected
in ambiguity
0

Number of
samples rejected
in distance
1

10

However, in both cases there is only one observation

rejected in distance. Thus, the solution with Mahalanobis
distance calculation will be kept. Lastly, in order to check this
decision rule robustness, random selections of the N samples
of the training step were made. Then after 30 iterations and
for k equals 6 and 7, the number of samples misclassified,
rejected in ambiguity and rejected in distance were studied
(Fig. 4).
TABLE V
CLASSIFICATION RESULT (ON 50 UNKNOWN PATTERNS) WITH THE
EUCLIDEAN DISTANCE

Fig. 4. Decision rule robustness analysis. After 30 random selections of N

samples for the training step (k=6 "*", k=7 "o"). Number of misclassified,
rejected in distance and rejected in ambiguity.

VI. CONCLUSION
A decision system to detect broken bars in induction
motors has been presented. With the help of the signature
(pattern vector), the procedure, based on pattern recognition
approach, allows the identification of the different operating
conditions. Different levels of load are studied in order to
follow the classes evolution. In the training step the principal
component analysis has allowed to see that the classes were
separated, which means that the defined pattern vector is a
relevant signature. The k-nearest neighbors rule, including
ambiguity reject and distance reject, is widely applied in
statistical pattern recognition. For our study, it offers
encouraging results, especially when it is based on the
Mahalanobis distance measurement. With this training set,
other decision rules, such as accurate decision boundaries
between classes, can be applied in order to improve the
decision step.

Number of samples
misclassified Before
reject options
5

Number of
samples rejected
in ambiguity
0

Number of
samples rejected
in distance
1

10

10

10

10

[2] W. T. Thomson, M. Fenger, "Current signature analysis to detect

10

10

induction motor faults". IEEE Industry Application Magazine.

July/August 2001.
R. Casimir, E. Boutleux, G. Clerc and F. Chappuis, "Comparative
study of diagnosis methods for induction motor" International
Conference on Electrical Machines August 25-28, 2002 Brugge,
Belgium
S. M. A. Cruz and A. J. M Cardoso, "Rotor cage fault diagnosis in
three-phase induction motors by Extended Park's Vector approach"
Electrical Machines and Power Systems, Vol. 28, no 4, pp. 289-299,
2000.
P. Vas, "Electrical machines and drives, a space vector theory
approach" Oxford University Press, New York, USA 1992
K. Fukunaga, "Introduction to statistical pattern recognition". Second
edition, Academic Press, San Diego, 1990
B. Pinkowski, "Principal Component analysis of speech spectrogram
images". Pattern recognition, Vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 777-787, 1997.

The maximum error rate of classification obtained was

th
10% (5 unknown samples misclassified on 50 at the 11
iteration). And the maximum number of samples rejected in
ambiguity and in distance was 2 and 3 respectively. These
results justify the robustness of the method.
With this diagnosis approach, almost all the different
operating conditions of the induction motor (faulty or not and
according to the level of load) were identified.

VII. REFERENCES
[1] R. Yacamini, S. C Chang, "Noise and vibration from induction
machines fed from harmonic sources ", IEEE Trans. Energy
Conversion, Vol. 10 no 2, June 1995.

[3]

[4]

[5]
[6]
[7]

[8] M. Friedman and A. Kandel, "Introduction to pattern recognition

statistical, structural, neural and fuzzy logic approaches". Imperial
College Press, London 1999.
[9] B. Dubuisson. Decision with reject options. In 5th European Signal
Processing conference, Barcelona Spain, 1990.

VIII. BIOGRAPHIES
Roland Casimir was born in Saint-Rose
(Guadeloupe), France, on September 14,
1975. He obtained in 2000 the Master Degree
in Electrical Engineering from the "Institut
National Polytechnique" of Toulouse. He is
currently engaged in Ph.D. research in the
department of Electrical engineering of the
Ecole Centrale de Lyon. At the laboratory
CEGELY, his research interests are in fault
diagnosis of electrical machines by means of
pattern recognition methods
Emmanuel Boutleux was born on july 1970
in Friville-Escarbotin (Picardie), France.
Within
the
laboratory
HEUDIASYC
(Compigne France) he became PhD in
System Control in 1996. He is currently an
Assistant Professor in Automatica at Ecole
Centrale de Lyon. His research at the
laboratory CEGELY includes diagnosis of
complex systems by means of pattern
recognition methods.
Guy Clerc was born in Libourne, France, on
November 30, 1960. He received the
Enginer's degree and the PhD in Electrical
engineering from the Ecole Centrale de Lyon,
France, in 1984 and 1989, respectively. From
2000, he was Professor of University at
UCBL. He taught "numerical control of
electrical
machines"
and
electrical
engineering. He carried out research on
control and diagnosis of induction machines.
He has written several papers on robust control and fault prediction.
He has written a book with G. Grellet entitled "Actionneurs
lectriques : principes et commandes" (C) Eyrolles.