System and method for reliability and efficiency assessment of locomotive electric motors and systems driven thereby

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to:

• obtain respective electrical measurements of an electric motor of a vehicle during one or more operational states including a start-up stage, a transition stage, and a steady-state stage,
• based on the respective electrical measurements, determine respective electrical patterns of said respective electrical measurements that correspond to said one or more operational states,
• compare the respective electrical patterns corresponding to said one or more operational states with respective baseline electrical patterns modeled for said one or more operational states to yield a comparison result,
• determine a status of said electric motor based on the comparison result,
• based on the comparison result, output to a display an indication of said status of said electric motor;
• and
• identify an inefficiency or malfunction in said one or more operational states of the electric motor as indicated by the displayed indication prior to failure of the electric motor.

A method for diagnosing one or more operational states of an electric motor of a vehicle in real time by monitoring a trend pattern of a physical operational parameter of the electric motor within said one or more operational states, said one or more operational states including a start-up stage, a transition stage, and a steady-state stage, said physical operational parameter including at least one of voltage and current, the method comprising:

• continuously collecting in each of said one or more operational states and by a processor of an electrical pattern monitoring (ePM) device connected to at least one of a current sensor and a voltage sensor coupled to a power load wire of said electric motor, data values of the parameter from the electric motor from said at least one of a current sensor and a voltage sensor, said ePM device further including an output configured to transmit data to a remote device;
• monitoring, by said processor, for changes in value levels in the collected data and determining whether a detected change is greater than a predetermined significance factor;
• responsive to determining that a collected data value is stable by detecting that the change is less than the predetermined significance factor, creating or updating a level matrix with data corresponding to characteristics of the collected stable data value;
• responsive to determining that a collected data value is in transition between stable levels by detecting that the change is greater than the predetermined significance factor, creating or updating a transition matrix with data corresponding to characteristics of the collected transitional data value;
• forming, for each of said one or more operational states, said trend pattern as an operational electrical pattern of the parameter by combining data associated with the level matrix with data associated with the transition matrix;
• analyzing, by said processor, the operational electrical pattern to derive an indicator indicating a status of the electric motor in said one or more operational states;
• outputting the indicator, from said output of the said ePM device, to a display of said remote device;
• and
• correcting an inefficiency or malfunction in said one or more operational states of the electric motor as indicated by the indicator prior to failure of the electric motor.