A new diagnostic method based on support vector machine for short circuit winding faults in induction motors

Abstract

Inter-turn short circuits (ITSCs) in induction motor (IM) windings are among the most critical and frequent faults in industrial environments, as they can rapidly evolve into severe damage, leading to unplanned downtime and costly maintenance. To enhance the reliability of IMs, this paper proposes a machine learning–based diagnosis method dedicated to ITSC failures. The developed diagnostic tool combines a support vector machine (SVM) classifier with Fisher’s ratio (FR)-based feature selection. The proposed framework uses experimentally acquired current signals under healthy conditions and five ITSC fault severity levels (1%–5%), evaluated across four load conditions (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). Each signal is segmented into 200 non-overlapping segments (500 samples each), from which nine time-domain features are extracted to capture fault-related characteristics. These features are then used for training and testing a SVM classifier capable of distinguishing between healthy states and levels of severity of ITSC faults. To optimize the classification process, the Fisher’s ratio (FR) algorithm is employed to select the most informative features while discarding those with low relevance. Our findings unveiled that the proposed hybrid FR-SVM-based diagnosis achieves high diagnostic accuracy ranging from 99.54% to 100%. Furthermore, the outcomes prove that the integrated technical framework (time-domain features + FR + SVM) provides zero false alarms and a balanced diagnostic system that combines computational speed with high precision.