Fault Diagnosis Of Electrical Connector Contacts Based On Infrared Thermal Imaging Technology

The methods of the maintenance at present are primarily the scheduled maintenance andthe accident-overhaul. To a certain extent, although the two methods ensure the safe of theequipments, sometimes they will cause less or over maintenance, wasting a lot of human andmaterial resources. With the development of power system towards a high voltage, largecapacity, it is more and more important to ensure the safe operation of electrical equipment.Therefore, the implementation of condition-based maintenance is imperative. Condition-basedmaintenance includes equipment condition monitoring, fault diagnosis and repair decisions. Itmainly depends on the state of the condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of the equipment.Fault diagnosis analysis equipment operating parameters from condition monitoring. Theanalysis results combining the historical conditions of the equipment identify the objectivestate of equipment. The research based on infrared thermal imaging technology study theelectrical contact monitoring and fault diagnosis which is objective to supply a reliabletheoretical basis for the condition-based maintenance.Infrared thermal instrument has great advantage in the respect of monitoring the powerequipment malfunction. It becomes an effective means of detection by getting the truetemperature distribution of the equipment, no power cutting, no contacting, visual andaccurate. The research has analyzed the principle of the contacts including the contraction andthe area outside the contraction while passing electric current through its image andtemperature that measured by infrared thermal system and get the contact thermalconductivity model which based on the temperature and voltage parameters. The model canestimate the temperature contact point, which with Relative temperature standard to appraisecontact terminal operation state. By the image enhancement and edge detection methods inmatlab image box to process the infrared images, the research gets accurate fault location.With VC++.Net and Access 2003, the research develop a Temperature Data ManagementSystem-Flirsystem. The Flirsystem solve the problem in temperature records losing anddisorder and achieve data records, delete, examine, history data inquiry and the history curvescatter and get diagnose result. All this is as reference to repairing personnel.