Andy Tan

VIBEX: an expert system for vibration fault diagnosis of rotating machinery using decision tree and decision table

This paper proposes an expert system called VIBEX (VIBration EXpert) to aid plant operators in diagnosing the cause of abnormal vibration for rotating machinery. In order to automatize the diagnosis, a decision table based on the cause-symptom matrix is used as a probabilistic method for diagnosing abnormal vibration. Also a decision tree is used as the acquisition of structured knowledge in the form of concepts is introduced to build a knowledge base which is indispensable for vibration expert systems. The decision tree is a technique used for building knowledge-based systems by the inductive inference from examples and plays a role itself as a vibration diagnostic tool. The proposed system has been successfully implemented on Microsoft Windows environment and is written in Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C++. To validate the system performance, the diagnostic system was tested with some examples using the two diagnostic methods.

Bearing fault prognosis based on health state probability estimation

In condition-based maintenance (CBM), effective diagnostic and prognostic tools are essential for maintenance engineers to identify imminent fault and predict the remaining useful life before the components finally fail. This enables remedial actions to be taken in advance and reschedule of production if necessary. All machine components are subjected to degradation processes in real environments and they have certain failure characteristics which can be related to the operating conditions. This paper describes a technique for accurate assessment of the remnant life of bearings based on health state probability estimation and historical knowledge embedded in the closed loop diagnostics and prognostics system. The technique uses the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier as a tool for estimating health state probability of machine degradation process to provide long term prediction. To validate the feasibility of the proposed model, real life fault historical data from bearings of High Pressure-Liquefied Natural Gas (HP-LNG) pumps were analysed and used to obtain the optimal prediction of remaining useful life (RUL). The results obtained were very encouraging and showed that the proposed prognosis system based on health state probability estimation has the potential to be used as an estimation tool for remnant life prediction in industrial machinery.

Case-based reasoning system with Petri nets for induction motor fault diagnosis

Abstract This paper presents an innovative approach for integrating case-based reasoning (CBR) with Petri net for the fault diagnosis of induction motors. In the CBR system, maintenance engineers can retrieve the information from previous cases which closely resemble the new problem and solve the new problem using the information from the previous cases. The proposed system has been used in fault diagnosis of electric motor to confirm the system performance. The result shows the proposed system performs better than the conventional CBR system.

CONDITION MONITORING OF LOW SPEED BEARINGS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ULTRASOUND TECHNIQUE VERSUS VIBRATION MEASUREMENTS

Bearing failure is often attributed to be one of the major causes of breakdown in industrial rotating machines that operate at high and low speeds. This paper presents results of a comparative experimental study on the application of the ultrasound technique for condition monitoring of low speed rolling element bearings and conventional vibration measurements with seeded faults on inner-race defects. The effectiveness of the ultrasound technique is demonstrated through signal processing techniques; use of statistical parameters derived from the time domain, and enveloped spectra in the frequency domain. The results reveal that the ultrasound technique is more effective in detecting low speed bearings failure than that of the vibration measurement.

FAULT DIAGNOSIS OF LOW SPEED BEARING BASED ON ACOUSTIC EMISSION SIGNAL AND MULTI-CLASS RELEVANCE VECTOR MACHINE

This study presents an acoustic emission (AE) based fault diagnosis for low speed bearing using multi-class relevance vector machine (RVM). A low speed test rig was developed to simulate the various defects with shaft speeds as low as 10 rpm under several loading conditions. The data was acquired using an AE sensor with the test bearing operating at a constant loading (5 kN) and with a speed range from 20 to 80 rpm. This study is aimed at finding a reliable method/tool for low speed machines fault diagnosis based on AE signal. In the present study, component analysis was performed to extract the bearing feature and to reduce the dimensionality of original data feature. The result shows that multi-class RVM offers a promising approach for fault diagnosis of low speed machines.

Correlation-Based Damage Detection for Complicated Truss Bridges Using Multi-Layer Genetic Algorithm

The study presents a multi-layer genetic algorithm (GA) approach using correlation-based methods to facilitate damage determination for through-truss bridge structures. To begin, the structures damage-suspicious elements are divided into several groups. In the first GA layer, the damage is initially optimised for all groups using correlation objective function. In the second layer, the groups are combined to larger groups and the optimisation starts over at the normalised point of the first layer result. Then the identification process repeats until reaching the final layer where one group includes all structural elements and only minor optimisations are required to fine tune the final result. Several damage scenarios on a complicated through-truss bridge example are nominated to address the proposed approachs effectiveness. Structural modal strain energy has been employed as the variable vector in the correlation function for damage determination. Simulations and comparison with the traditional single-layer optimisation shows that the proposed approach is efficient and feasible for complicated truss bridge structures when the measurement noise is taken into account.

Machine Prognostics Based on Health State Estimation Using SVM

The ability to accurately predict the remaining useful life of machine components is critical for machine continuous operation, and can also improve productivity and enhance system safety. In condition-based maintenance (CBM), maintenance is performed based on information collected through condition monitoring and an assessment of the machine health. Effective diagnostics and prognostics are important aspects of CBM for maintenance engineers to schedule a repair and to acquire replacement components before the components actually fail. All machine components are subjected to degradation processes in real environments and they have certain failure characteristics which can be related to the operating conditions. This paper describes a technique for accurate assessment of the remnant life of machines based on health state probability estimation and involving historical knowledge embedded in the closed loop diagnostics and prognostics systems. The technique uses a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier as a tool for estimating health state probability of machine degradation, which can affect the accuracy of prediction. To validate the feasibility of the proposed model, real life historical data from bearings of High Pressure Liquefied Natural Gas (HP-LNG) pumps were analysed and used to obtain the optimal prediction of remaining useful life. The results obtained were very encouraging and showed that the proposed prognostic system based on health state probability estimation has the potential to be used as an estimation tool for remnant life prediction in industrial machinery.

Self-Sensing Active Suppression of Vibration of Flexible Steel Sheet

In rolling processes, flexible steel sheet is supported by rollers and is bound to produce structural vibration. This vibration can cause severe problems to surface finish and affect the quality of the product. To overcome these problems, active vibration control has been proposed. This usually requires both sensors and actuators. The location of sensors and actuators plays a very important role in active vibration control. Moreover, a reliable sensor can be very expensive. This paper proposes a self-sensing vibration control using a push-pull type electromagnet to control the transverse vibration of the steel plate. The construction of the electromagnet has two types of coils, namely the bias coil and the control coil. Vibration displacement is estimated by using the mutual inductance change between the bias and the control coils. The estimated signal is proportional to the gap displacement. The proportional and derivative signals are fed back to the control coil to reduce the transverse vibration of the steel sheet. The proposed method is applied to a simple test rig to confirm the capability of the device. The results obtained are showing high possibility for reducing steel sheet vibration.

Estimating the loading condition of a diesel engine using instantaneous angular speed analysis

Continuous monitoring of diesel engine performance is critical for early detection of fault developments in the engine before they materialize and become a functional failure. Instantaneous crank angular speed (IAS) analysis is one of a few non-intrusive condition monitoring techniques that can be utilized for such tasks. In this experimental study, IAS analysis was employed to estimate the loading condition of a 4-stroke 4-cylinder diesel engine in a laboratory condition. It was shown that IAS analysis can provide useful information about engine speed variation caused by the changing piston momentum and crankshaft acceleration during the engine combustion process. It was also found that the major order component of the IAS spectrum directly associated with the engine firing frequency (at twice the mean shaft revolution speed) can be utilized to estimate the engine loading condition regardless of whether the engine is operating at normal running conditions or in a simulated faulty injector case. The amplitude of this order component follows a clear exponential curve as the loading condition changes. A mathematical relationship was established for the estimation of the engine power output based on the amplitude of the major order component of the measured IAS spectrum.

Fault Diagnosis System of Induction Motors Based on Multiscale Entropy and Support Vector Machine with Mutual Information Algorithm

An effective fault diagnosis method for induction motors is proposed in this paper to improve the reliability of motors using a combination of entropy feature extraction, mutual information, and support vector machine. Sample entropy and multiscale entropy are used to extract the desired entropy features from motor vibration signals. Sample entropy is used to estimate the complexity of the original time series while multiscale entropy is employed to measure the complexity of time series in different scales. The entropy features are directly extracted from the nonlinear, nonstationary induction motor vibration signals which are then sorted by using mutual information so that the elements in the feature vector are ranked according to their importance and relevant to the faults. The first five most important features are selected from the feature vectors and classified using support vector machine. The proposed method is then employed to analyze the vibration data acquired from a motor fault simulator test rig. The classification results confirm that the proposed method can effectively diagnose various motor faults with reasonable good accuracy. It is also shown that the proposed method can provide an effective and accurate fault diagnosis for various induction motor faults using only vibration data.