Development of Air Entrainment Detection Method for Pumps Using Motor Current Signals

ABSTRACT Simple and cost‐effective methods for air entrainment detection are required for the efficient maintenance of pump systems. Recently, motor current signature analysis (MCSA) has been gaining attention for motor fault detection. In this paper, we review the characteristics of motor current signals in an air entrainment state and propose an MCSA technique for air entrainment detection. We observed that the foot around the fundamental harmonic spectrum in the power spectral density of current signals increased with an air entrainment. Based on these results, we propose defining a characteristic value which reflects this feature.