Acoustic-based fault diagnosis of electric motors using Mel spectrograms and convolutional neural networks

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive deep learning framework for diagnosing acoustic faults in electric motors. The framework uses Mel spectrograms and a lightweight convolutional neural network (CNN). The method classifies three motor states, engine_good, engine_broken, and engine_heavyload, based on audio recordings from the IDMT-ISA-ELECTRIC-ENGINE dataset. To prevent data leakage and ensure a robust evaluation, the study employed file-level splitting, session separation, 5-fold cross-validation, and repeated trials. The raw audio signals were transformed into Mel spectrograms and processed through a CNN architecture that integrates convolutional, pooling, normalization, and dropout layers. Quantitative metrics, including THD, spectral entropy, and SNR, further characterize the acoustic distinctions between motor states. The proposed model achieved a test accuracy of 99.7%, outperforming or matching state-of-the-art approaches, such as ResNet-18, CRNN, and Transformer classifiers, as well as traditional MFCC-based baselines. Noise robustness and sensitivity analyses demonstrated stable performance under varying SNR conditions and preprocessing settings. Feature-importance maps revealed that low-frequency regions (0–40 Mel bins) were key discriminative components linked to physical fault mechanisms. Computational evaluation confirmed the model’s real-time feasibility on embedded hardware with low latency and a modest parameter count. Though primarily validated on one motor type, external-domain testing revealed strong adaptability. Future work may incorporate transfer learning or multimodal fusion. Overall, the proposed framework provides a highly accurate, interpretable, and efficient solution for real-time motor fault diagnosis and predictive maintenance in industrial environments.