Instrumentation and experimental investigation of industrial DC machines for condition monitoring purposes

DC machines continue to be widely used in many applications including mining. No comprehensive condition monitoring tools for large industrial DC machines are available on the market. Recent advances in sensoring, data acquisition and signal processing technologies allow one to obtain real time chracteristics of DC machines directly related to their performance, such as flux density distribution inside the main air gap. This paper is based on a research project sponsored by industry partners that included construction of a test facility and an extensive experimental program with a view of development of a condition monitoring tool. The paper explains about the motor instrumentation, facility structure and tests performed to date. Based on the experimental results, a number of performance characteristics are derived in the paper including steady state, dynamic and digital drive related characteristics, as described in the paper. The findings of the paper are discussed with their potential application to the condition monitoring tool development.