Abstract

Motors, which are one of the most widely used machines in the manufacturing field, take charge of a key role in precision machining. Therefore, it is important to accurately estimate the health state of the motor that affects the quality of the product. The research outlined in this paper aims to improve motor fault severity estimation by suggesting a novel deep learning method, specifically, feature inherited hierarchical convolutional neural network (FI-HCNN). FI-HCNN consists of a fault diagnosis part and a severity estimation part, arranged hierarchically. The main novelty of the proposed FI-HCNN is the special inherited structure between the hierarchy; the severity estimation part utilizes the latent features to exploit the fault-related representations in the fault diagnosis task. FI-HCNN can improve the accuracy of the fault severity estimation because the level-specific abstraction is supported by the latent features. Also, FI-HCNN has ease in practical application because it is developed based on stator current signals which are usually acquired for a control purpose. Experimental studies of mechanical motor faults, including eccentricity, broken rotor bars, and unbalanced conditions, are used to corroborate the high performance of FI-HCNN, as compared to both conventional methods and other hierarchical deep learning methods.