Online Bearing Remaining Useful Life Prediction Based on a Novel Degradation Indicator and Convolutional Neural Networks

In industrial applications, nearly half the failures of motors are caused by the degradation of rolling element bearings (REBs). Therefore, accurately estimating the remaining useful life (RUL) for REBs are of crucial importance to ensure the reliability and safety of mechanical systems. To tackle this challenge, model-based approaches are often limited by the complexity of mathematical modeling. Conventional data-driven approaches, on the other hand, require massive efforts to extract the degradation features and construct health index. In this paper, a novel online data-driven framework is proposed to exploit the adoption of deep convolutional neural networks (CNN) in predicting the RUL of bearings. More concretely, the raw vibrations of training bearings are first processed using the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) and a novel nonlinear degradation indicator is constructed as the label for learning. The CNN is then employed to identify the hidden pattern between the extracted degradation indicator and the vibration of training bearings, which makes it possible to estimate the degradation of the test bearings automatically. Finally, testing bearings' RULs are predicted by using a $\epsilon$-support vector regression model. The superior performance of the proposed RUL estimation framework, compared with the state-of-the-art approaches, is demonstrated through the experimental results. The generality of the proposed CNN model is also validated by transferring to bearings undergoing different operating conditions

A review of physics-based models in prognostics: application to gears and bearings of rotating machinery

Health condition monitoring for rotating machinery has been developed for many years due to its potential to reduce the cost of the maintenance operations and increase availability. Covering aspects include sensors, signal processing, health assessment and decision-making. This article focuses on prognostics based on physics-based models. While the majority of the research in health condition monitoring focuses on data-driven techniques, physics-based techniques are particularly important if accuracy is a critical factor and testing is restricted. Moreover, the benefits of both approaches can be combined when data-driven and physics-based techniques are integrated. This article reviews the concept of physics-based models for prognostics. An overview of common failure modes of rotating machinery is provided along with the most relevant degradation mechanisms. The models available to represent these degradation mechanisms and their application for prognostics are discussed. Models that have not been applied to health condition monitoring, for example, wear due to metal–metal contact in hydrodynamic bearings, are also included due to its potential for health condition monitoring. The main contribution of this article is the identification of potential physics-based models for prognostics in rotating machinery

Prognosis of Bearing Acoustic Emission Signals Using Supervised Machine Learning

© 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Acoustic emission (AE) technique can be successfully utilized for condition monitoring of various machining and industrial processes. To keep machines function at optimal levels, fault prognosis model to predict the remaining useful life (RUL) of machine components is required. This model is used to analyze the output signals of a machine whilst in operation and accordingly helps to set an early alarm tool that reduces the untimely replacement of components and the wasteful machine downtime. Recent improvements indicate the drive on the way towards incorporation of prognosis and diagnosis machine learning techniques in future machine health management systems. With this in mind, this work employs three supervised machine learning techniques; support vector machine regression, multilayer artificial neural network model and gaussian process regression, to correlate AE features with corresponding natural wear of slow speed bearings throughout series of laboratory experiments. Analysis of signal parameters such as signal intensity estimator and root mean square was undertaken to discriminate individual types of early damage. It was concluded that neural networks model with back propagation learning algorithm has an advantage over the other models in estimating the RUL for slow speed bearings if the proper network structure is chosen and sufficient data is provided.Peer reviewe

Autoregressive modelling for rolling element bearing fault diagnosis

In this study, time series analysis and pattern recognition analysis are used effectively for the purposes of rolling bearing fault diagnosis. The main part of the suggested methodology is the autoregressive (AR) modelling of the measured vibration signals. This study suggests the use of a linear AR model applied to the signals after they are stationarized. The obtained coefficients of the AR model are further used to form pattern vectors which are in turn subjected to pattern recognition for differentiating among different faults and different fault sizes. This study explores the behavior of the AR coefficients and their changes with the introduction and the growth of different faults. The idea is to gain more understanding about the process of AR modelling for roller element bearing signatures and the relation of the coefficients to the vibratory behavior of the bearings and their condition

Filtering procedure for local damage detection in gearbox using alpha stable modeling

In the paper a procedure for enhancement of noisy vibration signal for local damage detection is presented. The developed method is based on α-stable distribution approach. This distribution belongs to the rich class of heavy tailed family and was used in different applications. The proposed methodology covers decomposition of the signal via time-frequency spectrogram into set of narrowband sub-signals and estimation of stability parameter under the assumption that sub-signals constitute samples from α-stable distribution. As a result of sub-signals modelling, we obtain distribution of α parameter vs. frequencies that is analogy to spectral kurtosis approach well known in the literature. Such characteristic is basis for filter design used for raw signal enhancement. To evaluate efficiency of our method we compare raw and filtered signal in time, time-frequency and frequency (envelope spectrum) domains. The presented methodology we applied to real vibration signal from two stage heavy duty gearbox used in mining industry

Diesel engine fuel injection monitoring using acoustic measurements and independent component analysis

Air-borne acoustic based condition monitoring is a promising technique because of its intrusive nature and the rich information contained within the acoustic signals including all sources. However, the back ground noise contamination, interferences and the number of Internal Combustion Engine ICE vibro-acoustic sources preclude the extraction of condition information using this technique. Therefore, lower energy events; such as fuel injection, are buried within higher energy events and/or corrupted by background noise. This work firstly investigates diesel engine air-borne acoustic signals characteristics and the benefits of joint time-frequency domain analysis. Secondly, the air-borne acoustic signals in the vicinity of injector head were recorded using three microphones around the fuel injector (120° apart from each other) and an Independent Component Analysis (ICA) based scheme was developed to decompose these acoustic signals. The fuel injection process characteristics were thus revealed in the time-frequency domain using Wigner-Ville distribution (WVD) technique. Consequently the energy levels around the injection process period between 11 and 5 degrees before the top dead center and of frequency band 9 to 15 kHz are calculated. The developed technique was validated by simulated signals and empirical measurements at different injection pressure levels from 250 to 210 bars in steps of 10 bars. The recovered energy levels in the tested conditions were found to be affected by the injector pressure settings

Application of alpha-stable distribution approach for local damage detection in rotating machines

In this paper a novel method for informative frequency band selection for local damage detection is presented. Local damage in bearings/gearbox provides specific vibration signature, i.e. train of impulses with cycle related to fault frequency. The proposed approach is based on the α-stable distribution, which is an extension of the Gaussian one. The choice of this distribution is motivated by its superiority towards other distributions when modeling impulsive data. We introduce here the new selector (to select informative frequency band) which is based on the stability parameter α. Moreover we propose also the new time-frequency maps based on the measures of dependence adequate for α-stable distribution, namely autocodifference and autocovariation maps. The introduced methodology is illustrated by analysis of simulated and real vibration signals from heavy-duty rotating machinery. The results prove that proposed approach allows detection of multiple damages in signal and location of informative frequency band related to these damages. Moreover the analyzed examples indicate the α-stable distribution approach for some cases can give better results in contrast to the classical methodology based on the spectral kurtosis