Stator current analysis for bearing damage detection in induction motors

This paper presents experimental results for diagnosing faults in bearings with different raceway defects via motor current spectral analysis. This is an important contribution since experimental results for bearings with inner race faults are extremely sparse in the literature. This research indicates that detecting these fault frequencies in the motor current is significantly more difficult than detecting them in the motor vibration. Specifically, inner race faults are very difficult to detect by searching for their signatures in the current. This paper also shows that it is not easy to compare different bearings of the same type or even the same bearing in different installations, which makes it difficult to determine the sensitivity of current-based bearing fault detection. For this reason, the use of wider frequency ranges is suggested for current-based detection.