This paper revolves around a thermal imaging technology that enhance the perception and awareness towards the objects we see around us. Here, we are using this technology for the protection and defect detections of electrical power equipment. Starting from the origin of infrared we will go through the development and research on thermography. Then, it is followed by the real-time 3 dimensional thermography using Matlab and thermal imaging camera. Then the systematic procedures for the temperature measurement thereby detecting the faults in the electrical power equipment using 3D thermography. And then taking the corrective action by guiding the automation software’s according to the temperature signatures of the devices. In addition, this paper presents the outline of the previous researches related to the project.

1. B. K. BIRLA INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY
PILANI (RAJ.)
BATCHLOR OF TECHNOLOGY
THESIS SYNOPSIS
Proposed Topic
PROTECTION OF ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT
USING 3D THERMOGRAPHY AND IMAGE
PROCESSING
SUBMITTED BY
EKLAVYA SHARMA
12EBKEE031
2012
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
B. K. BIRLA INSTITUTE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY PILANI (RAJ.)
Address: F-26, CEERI Colony, CEERI Pilani Jhunjhunu (Raj.)
Email: eklavyasharma5@gmail.com
Phone Number: +91-7891584655
SUPERVISED BY
Prof. Rajesh Singh Shekhawat
Assistant Professor
BKBIET Pilani
RAJASTHAN TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
KOTA, INDIA

2. INTRODUCTION:
In recent times, due to the continually increasing rate of consumption of electrical energy,
electrical utilities are facing problems of increased risk of failures, blackouts, brownouts and
aging infrastructure. And with this increasing extent of demand the number of electrical
equipment’s are consumed at a very high rate on the daily basis. Hence, with no doubts, we can
say that electrical power equipment’s has formed the most vital constituent in the human
consumables and existence. So, it simply means that, to assure the quality, efficiency and
reliability of the electrical power delivery it is compulsory to do timely preventive maintenance
checks, inspection and testing of the electrical equipment’s. As due to untimely defect detection,
inefficiency and errors either during manufacturing or at the time of inspection of the electrical
equipment’s that are currently in service, more and more number of electrical equipment’s have
been damaged and scrapped.
In view of this companies are adopting new techniques and methods to improve their products
and services. But still the method of testing and inspection are based on the conventional method
of direct contact testing. These preventive maintenance and inspection technique involves the
physical contact with electrical equipment and components which could be dangerous, time
consuming, less efficient, not cost effective and technically prone to errors due to large size of
equipment’s or other inevitable reasons. In addition, the conventional direct-contact preventive
maintenance requires de-energizing of the electrical power equipment’s before the
commencement of testing. So, need of the time is to improve the reliability of electrical power
delivery while ensuring the safety of electrical utilities and factory workers at reduced cost.
Computer aided real-time condition monitoring and defect scrutiny system using automated three
dimensional infrared thermography with automation software's provides a valuable solution for
the timely fault diagnosis. Thermal imaging cameras allows us to make the invisible visible that
will easily detect the incipient faults in the electrical equipment. And the 3D thermography can
scan entire electrical equipment, components, or panels at once without missing any overheating
hazards, no matter how small. Thermal imaging is a non-contact measurement methodology that
gives us much higher accuracy than direct contact measurement as in some instances like testing
the printed circuit boards when the targets are small if we introduce a thermocouple to that target
just by connecting it then it will actually change the thermal characteristics or properties as the
thermocouple in the sense becomes a heat sink and temperature values that we will get will not
be exact or accurate.
For the protection of power system equipment the infrared thermography is extremely beneficial
and cost effective. It is based on the fact that many electrical components heat up before they fail
and all objects that has a temperature above absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius or 0 Kelvin)
emits radiation in the infrared region that are not visible to the human eye The intensity of the
infrared radiation emitted by objects is mainly a function of its temperature; the higher the
temperature, the greater the intensity of the emitted infrared energy. From the thermal images we

3. can convert the heat radiation to the specific temperature values and guide the specified
automation software to do the specified action. It has a great potential for the enhancement in
reliability of operation, improved quality of electrical facilities, reduction in consequential
damage, reduction in routine maintenance checks and improved security of electrical equipment's
at lower operational costs. Three dimensional thermal imaging of electrical equipment’s can
capture the wider thermal view of larger equipment’s and at the same time detecting the
defective parts. This technique can monitor the real-time condition of electrical equipment,
anticipate and detect the possible risk of failures and security breaches and can rapidly respond
like initialize cooling, breaking off the risked equipment or an early warning system with or
without human interventions at a remote monitoring location.
These thermal imaging technology with MATLAB can be calibrated to provide temperature
measurement. Specifically, we can make temperature or radiometric measurements with certain
calibrated instruments. We can look at the targets emitting thermal radiation very intuitively to
perform the analysis. With a calibrated camera the temperature values or the radiance values
from the thermal image of an electrical instruments can be easily extracted. By getting the
thermal image of an electrical instruments one can find out the areas on the image that are
warmer than other.
The MATLAB provides the interfacing of thermal imaging cameras and also allows us to
configure and control the external hardware. And the reconstruction of the 3D model with the
multiple view of thermal imaging cameras can be easily done in the MATLAB using the
computer vision system toolbox. In Matlab, Structure from Motion inside the computer vision
system tool box helps us to estimate the 3D structure of a scene from a set of 2D views.
Matlab provides Camera Calibrator app that reconstructs a 3D scene from a sequence of 2D
views taken with a camera. It automatically matches between points from pairs of views and
manage the data associated with each view such as camera pose and the image points. MATLAB
can extend the capability of the camera using sensor fusion that combines the machine vision
with the temperature measurement and takes the required step. With MATLAB image processing
we can easily extract the temperature values from the 3D thermal models and take the corrective
decision with the interfaced hardware. So, the protection of electrical equipment using 3d
thermography and image processing using MATLAB, thermal imaging camera and automation
software, have wide area of research and can save a huge amount of money and work force.

4. BRIEF LITERATURE SURVEY
INTRODUCTION:
This paper revolves around a thermal imaging technology that enhance the perception and
awareness towards the objects we see around us. Here, we are using this technology for the
protection and defect detections of electrical power equipment. Starting from the origin of
infrared we will go through the development and research on thermography. Then, it is followed
by the real-time 3 dimensional thermography using Matlab and thermal imaging camera. Then
the systematic procedures for the temperature measurement thereby detecting the faults in the
electrical power equipment using 3D thermography. And then taking the corrective action by
guiding the automation software’s according to the temperature signatures of the devices. In
addition, this paper presents the outline of the previous researches related to the project.
THERMOGRAPHY:
Infrared came into existence in the year 1800 when it was discovered by the astronomer Sir
Frederick William Herschel. He keenly observed the Newton’s prism experiment on the basis of
heating effect rather than visual distribution of intensity in the spectrum. He measured the
temperature of the spectrum and found that the dark region beyond the red portion of the
spectrum was hottest and named it thermometrical spectrum. After some years it was named as
infrared ranging from 1 mm down to 750 mm on the thermal spectral band of the
electromagnetic spectrum. Soon after the discovery of the infrared, John Herschel, son of the
discoverer of infrared managed to obtain the thermal image on paper, which he called a
thermograph and it is the basis of our whole study. Based on the infrared thermography, first
conventional infrared camera was made in 1956 [1] – [2]. Since then researches are going on to
find the more and more application of this technology.
Stefan-Boltzmann stated that the total radiation emitted by an object is directly proportional to
the object’s area and emissivity and the fourth power of its absolute temperature that is all
objects that has a temperature above absolute zero (-273.15 degrees Celsius or 0 Kelvin) emits
radiation in the infrared region that are not visible to the human eye [3]. By using this law today
infrared thermography is finding its application in medical diagnosis, surveillance, building
inspection, air leakage detection, electrical switchgear testing etc.
Infrared thermography is a technology that transforms the infrared image into a crisp visible
image, which allows us to read the temperature values of the object without any contact
measurement. Today, with the rapid development of electronic devices, we have thermal
imaging cameras that allows us to acquire the infrared image and the complex algorithm in the
cameras generates a real-time high resolution visible images by assigning a specific color to each
infrared energy level [4] – [5].

5. Since the evolution of thermal imaging technology, the use of thermal imaging cameras is very
reliable and robust for non-contact measurement and inspection of electrical equipment. These
properties makes the thermal imaging cameras a unique and valuable tool for detecting,
monitoring and predicting the anomalies in the field of electrical engineering.
3D THERMOGRAPHY:
The current technique of fault detection and diagnosis of electrical equipment is primarily based
on analyzing the 2D images due to which we get only a small field of view and low spatial
resolution of 2D thermal imaging. In addition, the current practices focuses on the direct
inspection and data analysis of raw 2D thermal images which is quite time consuming and labor-
intensive. Consequently, capturing and analyzing 2D thermal performance of building requires
large amount the thermal visual data and then processing the unordered and not geo-tagged
thermal images is difficult. To overcome these challenges real time 3D modelling of the
electrical equipment will give us a larger field of view and much enhanced spatial vision. Using
multiple thermal cameras we can easily generate a 3D model of any electrical equipment. The
efforts of this paper is on improving the quality and field of visual sensing by generating the 3D
thermal models by multiple thermal 2D views in Matlab and analyzing the 3D models to take the
corrective actions for the protection of electrical power equipment.
Over the past few years, several researches have been done focusing on the 3D thermography to
overcome the challenges in 2D thermal imaging technique. The Field Intelligence Laboratory at
MIT (Essess. Inc 2014) made thermal imaging very automated on a large scale. They have
mounted a thermal camera on a car that captures thermal scans of buildings to detect the energy
leaks escaping form building. In the medical applications of thermal imaging, combined real-
time 3D thermal imaging for the medical application (S. T. Smith, 2002) integrated thermal
camera into a 3D photogrammetry scanner to generate 3D thermal signatures. 3D thermography
imaging standardization technique allows quantitative data analysis for the sensitive and reliable
inflammation diagnosis (Xiangyang Ju et al.). With ordinary hand held thermal camera AR
visualization of the thermal 3D model can be made in order to monitor the spatial temperature
distribution (Kazuki Matsumoto et al., 2015). And Matlab provides methods to reconstruct a real
3D scene even with two static 2D images with an un-calibrated camera (Ted Shultz et al., 2003).
The algorithm displays the two images and the user matches corresponding points in both the
images. Then the reconstructed scene with depth perception obtained shows the different views
of the scene. In order to build the 3D models from the captured images the camera has to be
calibrated that is geometric configuration of the camera must be known.
In the computer vision community, the research has also been done in the multiple view
geometry (Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision by Hartley and Zisserman). The 3D
model reconstruction is based on the multi resolution image correlation. The corresponding point
of the stereo-pair images that are captured from multiple cameras are matched with one another
and an implicit surface is computed that merges together the point clouds into single polygon

6. mesh using a variant of the marching cubes algorithm [6]. The second step includes the
generation of 3D thermogram by mapping the infrared picture to the 3D geometry which is quite
straight forward as the thermal camera and stereo pair of cameras are calibrated together. Some
hybrid systems consisting multiple thermal cameras (a combination of one digital and two
thermal cameras or a thermal camera stereo system) can be used to build accurate and dense 3D
models.

7. PROBLEM FORMULATION:
Day by day due to the continually increasing population the demand for electricity is also
escalating causing blackouts, brownouts and overloading. Due to which utilities are facing costly
unplanned maintenance and unreliable power delivery. At the consumer end also the tariff of
electrical power is growing at higher rate with unsatisfied service. Utilities are looking for newer
technology to address these issues in order to increase the reliability with reduced cost.
By using the thermal imaging cameras and automation software the real-time defect detection
and inspection of electrical equipment can be done any time with higher accuracy and reduced
cost.
Conventionally, the direct contact approach of preventive measurement risks the life of electrical
equipment as well as electrical workers. In order to reduce the risk of electrocution due to direct
physical contact measurement during testing and inspection the thermal imaging technology
proves to be a valuable solution.
But the current thermal imaging technology is based on the 2D imaging technique that doesn’t
gives us the satisfying results. Although for smaller field of view and diagnosis of the instrument
requiring only single view detection 2D thermal imaging is perfect but for the equipment in the
power substation it is not up to mark. Because in 2D thermal imaging we get only a small field of
view and low spatial resolution missing some important targets. To overcome these challenges
real time 3D modelling of the electrical equipment will give us a larger field of view and much
enhanced spatial vision.

8. OBJECTIVES:
• To study thermal imaging technology for the protection of power system equipment
• To interface FLIR thermal imaging camera with MATLAB for real time thermal imaging of
electrical power equipment
• To reconstruct 3D thermal models from multiple 2D views using MATLAB
• To measure the temperature of electrical power equipment by processing the infrared images
from thermal camera
• To design a real time thermal imaging protection system that will identify the defects in the
electrical power equipment and make fault decision
• To configure and control external hardware with the MATLAB to make corrective actions at
the time of fault detection

9. REFERNCES:
[1]- A. Lisowska-List, S.A. Mitkowski & J. Augustyn, “Infrared technique and its application in
science and engineering in the study plans of students in electrical engineering and electronic” in
2nd World Conference on Technology and Engineering Education Ljubljana, Slovenia, 5-8
September 2011
[2]- FLIR Systems Incorporated “IR Automation Guidebook: Temperature Monitoring and
Control with IR Cameras”
[3]- Xiangyang Ju, Jean-Christophe Nebel, J. Paul Siebert, on “3D Thermography Imaging
Standardization Technique for Inflammation Diagnosis” at Digital Imaging Research Centre,
School of Computing & Information Systems, Kingston University Kingston upon Thames,
Surrey, KT1 2EE, UK
[4]- Rub´en Usamentiaga , Pablo Venegas ,Jon Guerediaga, Laura Vega, Julio Molleda and
Francisco G.Bulnes on “Infrared Thermography for Temperature Measurement and Non-
Destructive Testing” at Sensors 2014, 14, 12305-12348, ISSN 1424-8220,
www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
[5]- FLIR Systems Incorporated “Thermal imaging cameras for Automation & Fire and Safety”
[6]- W. E. Lorensen and H.e Cline, “Marching cubes: a high resolution 3D surface construction
algorithm”, ACM Computer Graphics, 21, 1987
[7]-Sudhanshu Goel, Ripul Ghosh, Satish Kumar, Aparna Akula, on “A Methodical Review of
Condition Monitoring Techniques For Electrical Equipment “

10. REFERNCES:
[1]- A. Lisowska-List, S.A. Mitkowski & J. Augustyn, “Infrared technique and its application in
science and engineering in the study plans of students in electrical engineering and electronic” in
2nd World Conference on Technology and Engineering Education Ljubljana, Slovenia, 5-8
September 2011
[2]- FLIR Systems Incorporated “IR Automation Guidebook: Temperature Monitoring and
Control with IR Cameras”
[3]- Xiangyang Ju, Jean-Christophe Nebel, J. Paul Siebert, on “3D Thermography Imaging
Standardization Technique for Inflammation Diagnosis” at Digital Imaging Research Centre,
School of Computing & Information Systems, Kingston University Kingston upon Thames,
Surrey, KT1 2EE, UK
[4]- Rub´en Usamentiaga , Pablo Venegas ,Jon Guerediaga, Laura Vega, Julio Molleda and
Francisco G.Bulnes on “Infrared Thermography for Temperature Measurement and Non-
Destructive Testing” at Sensors 2014, 14, 12305-12348, ISSN 1424-8220,
www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
[5]- FLIR Systems Incorporated “Thermal imaging cameras for Automation & Fire and Safety”
[6]- W. E. Lorensen and H.e Cline, “Marching cubes: a high resolution 3D surface construction
algorithm”, ACM Computer Graphics, 21, 1987
[7]-Sudhanshu Goel, Ripul Ghosh, Satish Kumar, Aparna Akula, on “A Methodical Review of
Condition Monitoring Techniques For Electrical Equipment “