Harnessing attention mechanisms in a comprehensive deep learning approach for induction motor fault diagnosis using raw electrical signals

Induction motors are widely used in various industrial applications due to their simplicity, robustness, and high efficiency. In recent years, deep learning approaches have shown great potential for detecting and diagnosing faults in induction motors. However, it was observed that the convolutional neural network (CNN) might miss the crucial long-range temporal dependencies of the significant features. At the same time, the recursive neural network (RNN) may face issues such as vanishing gradient and less computational efficiency if the data is too long with complex patterns. This paper proposes a novel deep-learning model that combines a one-dimensional CNN and an RNN into two independent pipelines. The spatial, temporal, long-term, and short-term features can be extracted from the raw input signal. A multi-head mechanism, a state-of-the-art deep learning technique in natural language processing (NLP), enables the model to focus more on relevant features and prevent overfitting. Specifically, our method simplifies the conventional fault diagnosis workflow while maintaining competitive accuracy compared to several state-of-the-art methods. By leveraging the ability to detect faults directly from raw, unprocessed electrical signals, our approach offers a practical, cost-effective solution for real-time fault detection in industrial applications. This innovation has the potential to significantly reduce downtime and the associated operational costs, thereby providing immediate practical value in various industrial settings.