Investigation and development of a real-time on-site condition monitoring system for induction motors

Condition monitoring of induction motors is commonly used in industrial applications to maintain safe and reliable operation of plants. The current practice in condition monitoring primarily involves using various forms of mobile devices usually with a single sensor input to perform tests at regular intervals. However, such devices and monitoring services are expensive and require an experienced operator for reliable decisions. This paper investigates an alternative low cost solution for continuous condition monitoring of induction machines using multiple sensors, which can be located next to a machine under test and can provide condition information using indicator lights for quick diagnosis. In addition, the paper provides the hardware and software details of the system implemented which are based on an FPGA based (CompactRIO) LabVIEW platform. A number of test results are also provided in the paper to demonstrate its performance under real faults.