3D printed acoustic camera for electric motor diagnostics

Abstract

This paper focuses on the aspect of performing acoustic analysis for the purpose of electric motors diagnostics. The measurements are performed in noisy industrial environment with the use of a dedicated acoustic camera build by ABB. The acoustic camera comprises a set of microphones arranged in a pre-defined, carefully designed and manufactured shape. The great advantage of acoustic cameras is the sound measurements can be used to pin-point the exact location of the sound source in a monitored scene. This, in turn allows for the frequencies of interest to be separated from the background noise. The paper presents the result of comparing the acoustic camera outputs from two induction motor - a healthy motor and a motor suffering from a broken rotor bar fault. The presented results show that the acoustic camera is capable of detecting the characteristic electric motor fault and robustly localize it in space, which proves its robustness even in noisy industrial environment.