ABSTRACT

There is a constant increase in the Internal heat of electrical devices due to variety of reasons
ranging from incorrect loading, contact defects ,defects in insulation and protection, problems with
the relays or terminal blocks, etc until final failure which can lead to unpredicted outages and
possible harm. Thus an earlier knowledge is required for prior prevention of thermal defects in
electrical equipment to avoid failure. These days a quick, reliable, non-contact and cost effective
infrared thermographic inspection system is being used widely for determinig where and how
internal and external defects occur in equipment. The system gathers data for analysing thermal
condition through the careful analysis of thermal images of electric equipments. The images are
taken by infrared camera without interrupting the running operation of system. Both precautionery
and predictive maintenance programs are chosen for defect diagnosis. The number of data points
and sequence of inspection of thermal images depends on various factors such as thermal
condition, cost of a failure, type of production and age of equipment, etc. The objectives of this
article are to discuss about precautionary and predictive maintenance, thermal defects in electrical
equipment and also a smart thermal defect identification system for accelerating the predictive
defect diagnosis technique. The intelligent system proposes the use of artificial neural network and
statistical features to determine the existence of defect within equipment by monitoring its thermal
condition. For the working of the neural network, the optimum features were chosen as the inputs,
using discrimant analysis. The performance of the neural network was compared with the
performances results of discriminant analysis classifier and it showed that discriminant analysis
classifier outperformed with an accuracy of 82.40%.

INTRODUCTION

All objects with a temperature greater than absolute zero emit infrared radiation and cause a rise in
temperature. The naked eye is unable see the infrared energy because it is emitted as heat energy.
Infrared thermography is a technique for transforming invisible heat to a visual image which shows
the heat iamge of the object surface. The colour of the object surface in the heat image depends on
the surface temperature. An infrared camera also known as thermal imager is used to capture the
heat image and measures temperature gradient of the object surface [1,2]. For several years,
thermographic inspection has become an crucial tool for precautionary and predictive maintenance
of surface defect in various materials due to its non-contact,non-invasiveness, safety and relatively
cheaper approach. Thus number of studies were executed to prove thermography as a useful
technique in various practical applications [3e11]. Heat energy is an crucial factor in electrical
equipment for improving operational reliability. Electrical current traverses through a resistive
component and produces heat. Thermal energy produced from an electrical component is directly
proportional to the square of the current passing through it times the resistance (I 2 R Loss). Thus a
rise in electrical resistance causes in an overall increase in heat. With progress in time the condition
of the electrical component goes on deteriorating due to various reasons such as loose connection,
corrosion and insulators crack As a component deteriorates, its resistance increases and also
produces more heat. The increase in heat energy can lead the failure of electrical equipment and
also fire may break out. By using thermography for inspecting the equipment under loading
condition, the defective component can be spotted and classified by its level of severity [12].
Infrared thermography detects the heat which is produced in the electrical equipment. The thermal
profiles of electrical devices and connectors are captured using an infrared camera. Thermal profile
which is also called thermogram consists of a thermal image and a temperature scale. The different
colours of temperature scale represent the different temperature regions of the equipment. Heating
components are generally detected as red or brighter coloured areas in an infrared image. A circuit
breaker (CB) thermogram determined in the current study is shown in Fig. 1. In Fig. 1A, the
brighter area (R phase) shows the higher resistance and results overheating of that phase. The most
probable cause of this high resistance could be a bad or dirty connection. Fig. 1B shows the thermal
profile across the line L0 showing the variation of temperature in the equipment surface. Thus
errors in components are identified and then recorded. The maintenance programs are planned and
executed before breakdown of the electric equipment. Maintenance cost of electrical equipment
plays an crucial role for reducing the total operating cost of electrical power system. The
maintenance cost can be increased due to the lack of information about the maintenance scheduling
and type of maintenance needed for the electric equipment. Usually the operating performance of
electrical system is not monitored periodically which can play an crucial role in early prevention of
a fault and for increasing the usage of equipment. Instead, the schedule for maintenance is decided
by using the failure history of equipment or according to the prior experiences of maintenance
personnel. Infrared thermography is used to keep an eye on the performance of equipment which
provides a complete information on the operating status of equipment for increasing production,
reducing or removing unnecessary repairs, avoiding eventual failure and reducing the maintenance
cost of equipment. Usually, applying infrared thermography technology, the electrical thermal
defect and degree of defect are identified by monitoring its Delta T (DT) criteria [13]. The method
is known as qualitative based temperature measurement system [14]. The Delta T criteria of a
component is defined as a rise in temperature value above the temperature of a reference value,
which is usually the ambient temperature, temperature of a similar component under the same
condition or the maximum allowable temperature of the component [15]. Several set standards for
DT value are found such as Electrical Testing Association (NETA) [15], National Fire Protection
Association (NFPA) e NFPA 70-B [16] and InterNational American Society for Testing & Materials
(ASTM) e E [17], etc. Sometimes thermographers prefer to group thermal condition based on their
own inspection experiences instead of using the available standards. Artificial neural networks
(ANNs) are more powerful, robust and adaptive mathematical model for pattern identification and
classification [18,19]. Nowadays ANNs are being used to solve difficult non-linear practical world
problems. Several articles about the application of artificial neural networks (ANN) for electrical
fault diagnosis system using infrared thermography have been put forth in the past few years. In
these articles, different features were utilized as inputs of ANN. Almeida et al. [20] used a neuro-
fuzzy approach for fault detecting of lighting arrester while the inputs of the ANN were
thermographic and identification variables. The system was capapble of resulting index of wrong
diagnosis lower than 10% for classifying thermal condition into normal, suspicious and faulty
classes. Shafi’i and Hamzah [21] put forth the application of multilayered perceptron network. The
RGB colour scale data and temperature data were utilized to classify internal faults into four
different classes namely low, intermediate, medium and high. The result obtained 99.38% of
accuracy. Rahmani et al. [22] developed an smart system using support vector machine (SVM) as a
classifier and 22 image features of Zernike moments for study of ground substation errors. The
diagnosis was used on 20 thermal images and was able to obtain 68.42% of accuracy. Smedberg
[23] and Wretman [24] proposed an intelligent classification system based on ANN for detecting
three-phase fuses and different forms of connections defects. The four input parameters of ANN
were needed which are absolute maximum temperature, relative maximum temperature, mean
temperature difference compared to the other regions of the image and histogram distance to the
other regions of the image. The test error rate using all four different feature parameters as input of
ANN was 9.5% and the error rate using only the histogram distance as input was 31.2%. The set of
data was 74 infrared images. One of the disadvantages of working with a small dataset is that the
reliability of the results can become questionable. This paper will study the application of infrared
thermography technology as predictive/preventive maintenance program to detect the presence of
thermal errors in electrical equipment. The technique uses multilayered perceptron network,
statistical features and discriminant analysis classifier to characterize the thermal status of hotspot
into ‘defect’ and ‘no defect’ groups. Discriminant analysis classifier was utilized to select suitable
features and also to produce the linear regression model of each group using suitable features.
2. Preventive/predictive maintenance

Typically, for maintaining the equipment, two different approaches,

either run-to-failure or preventive maintenance are used.
The run-to-failure approach is easy and straightforward, where
there is no outflow of money on maintenance before
eventual breakdown of equipment. This method waits for equipment
failure before any maintenance procedure is taken. Thus the
method is more costly. Thermography based diagnosis system
allows the preventive/predictive maintenance for early prevention
of equipment failure without stopping the running operation
and saves money.
According to the historical data in USA [25], proper use of
preventive/predictive maintenance will cutdown about 33% to 50% of
maintenance cost that are wasted by most of the manufacturing
and production factories and also introduced the following advantages
from various aspects: