Method and apparatus for estimating time to failure acceleration factor

• US 6,728,580 B2
• Filed: 02/20/2001
• Issued: 04/27/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 02/20/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Kliman, Gerald Burt, Illouz, Kati, Hershey, John Erik, Osborn, Brock Estel
• Primary Examiner(s): Patel, Ramesh
• Application Number:
  US09/791,034
• Publication Number:
  US 20020161457A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,162 Days
• Field of Search: 700/21, 700/78, 700/79, 700/80, 700/81, 700/82, 700/159, 700/170, 700/173, 700/175, 700/279, 700/280, 700/304, 318/1, 318/3, 318/565, 318/563, 318/561, 318/568.16, 318/568.18
• US Class Current: 700/21
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 21/02 electric

Abstract

An apparatus for estimating the time to failure acceleration factor of a large industrial motor includes a sensor, a clock for controlling sensor sampling times, and a memory address calculator for mapping output signals of the sensor to a memory address. A unit is provided for incrementing the content of a specified memory address by unity.

Claims

1. An apparatus for estimating the time to failure acceleration factor of a large industrial motor, comprising:

at least one sensor responsive to an environmental variable;

a clock for controlling sampling times of said at least one sensor,

a memory address calculator for mapping output signals of said at least one sensor to a memory address; and

a memory unit for incrementing the content of said memory address by unity.

2. An apparatus for estimating the time to failure acceleration factor of a large industrial motor, comprising:

a plurality of sensors, each of said sensors being responsive to a respective environmental variable;

a clock for controlling sampling times of said sensors;

a memory address calculator for mapping output signals of said sensors to a memory address; and

a memory unit for incrementing the content of said memory address by unity.

3. The apparatus of claim 2 wherein at least one of said sensors is selected from a group consisting of a humidity sensor, a temperature sensor, a current sensor, and an inclinometer.

4. The apparatus of claim 2 wherein said sensors are adapted to provide analog output signals.

5. The apparatus of claim 4 including a plurality of samplers, each of said sensors being coupled to a respective one of said samplers for providing an output signal thereto;

and a plurality of quantizers, each of said samplers being coupled to a respective one of said quantizers for providing an output signal thereto.

6. The apparatus of claim 5 wherein each of said quantizers is coupled to said memory address calculator for providing an output signal thereto.

7. The apparatus of claim 6 wherein said memory address calculator comprises a Kronecker address calculator.

8. The apparatus according to claim 6 wherein the memory address calculator is coupled to said memory unit for providing output signals thereto.

9. The apparatus according to claim 7 wherein the memory address calculator is coupled to said memory unit for providing output signals thereto.

10. The apparatus according to claim 6 wherein a plurality of output signals of said memory address calculator are compressed to a single memory address.

11. The apparatus according to claim 7 wherein a plurality of output signals of said memory address calculator are compressed to a single memory address.

12. A method for estimating the time to failure acceleration factor of a large industrial motor, comprising the steps of:

periodically sampling an output signal from at least one sensor responsive to an environmental variable;

mapping said output signal of said at least one sensor to a memory address; and

incrementing the content of a memory at said memory address by unity.

13. A method for estimating the time to failure acceleration factor of a large industrial motor, comprising the steps of:

periodically sampling output signals from a plurality of sensors, each of said sensors being responsive to a respective environmental variable;

mapping said output signals of said sensors to a memory address; and

incrementing the content of a memory at said memory address by unity.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein at least one of said sensors is selected from a group consisting of a humidity sensor, a temperature sensor, a current sensor, and an inclinometer.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the output signals of said sensors are in analog format.

16. The method of claim 14 wherein the output signals mapped to said memory address comprise a Kronecker address.

17. The method according to claim 14 wherein the output signals mapped to said memory address are compressed to a single memory address.