Enhanced Fault Diagnosis of Drive-Fed Induction Motors Using a Multi-Scale Wide-Kernel CNN

Abstract

Induction motor (IM) drives are widely used in industrial applications, particularly within the renewable energy sector, owing to their fast dynamic response and robust performance. Reliable condition monitoring is essential to ensure uninterrupted operation, minimize unexpected downtime, and avoid associated financial losses. Although numerous studies have introduced advanced fault detection techniques for IMs, early fault identification remains a significant challenge, especially in systems powered by electronic drives. To address the limitations of manual feature extraction, deep learning methods, particularly conventional convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have emerged as promising tools for automated fault diagnosis. However, enhancing their capability to capture a broader spectrum of spatial features can further improve detection accuracy. This study presents a novel fault detection framework based on a multi-wide-kernel convolutional neural network (MWK-CNN) tailored for drive-fed induction motors. By integrating convolutional kernels of varying widths, the proposed architecture effectively captures both fine-grained details and large-scale patterns in the input signals, thereby enhancing its ability to distinguish between normal and faulty operating states. Electrical signals acquired from drive-fed IMs under diverse operating conditions were used to train and evaluate the MWK-CNN. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model exhibits heightened sensitivity to subtle fault signatures, leading to superior diagnostic accuracy and outperforming existing state-of-the-art approaches for fault detection in drive-fed IM systems.