Automatic Diagnostic System of Electrical Equipment Using Infrared Thermography

An automatic diagnosis system is proposed by this paper for a more and more important issue, preventive maintenance. Every year, various workplace accidents happen due to undesirable maintenance. No matter how stringent the rules governing the maintenance of electrical equipment may be, it is always a challenge for the power industry due to the large number of electrical equipment and the shortage of manpower. In this paper, an automatic diagnosis system for testing electrical equipment for defects is proposed. Based on nondestructive inspection, infrared thermography is used to automate the diagnosis process. Thermal image processing based on statistical methods and morphological image processing technique are used to identify hotspots and the reference temperature. Qualitative and quantitative analyses are carried out on the gathered information and inspection results are presented after being processed by the diagnosis. The thermal diagnosis system proposed by this paper can be used at the various power facilities to improve inspection efficiency as illustrated in the experiment results.