Second-order parameter estimation

This work provides a general framework for the design of second-order blind estimators without adopting any approximation about the observation statistics or the a priori distribution of the parameters. The proposed solution is obtained minimizing the estimator variance subject to some constraints on the estimator bias. The resulting optimal estimator is found to depend on the observation fourth-order moments that can be calculated analytically from the known signal model. Unfortunately, in most cases, the performance of this estimator is severely limited by the residual bias inherent to nonlinear estimation problems. To overcome this limitation, the second-order minimum variance unbiased estimator is deduced from the general solution by assuming accurate prior information on the vector of parameters. This small-error approximation is adopted to design iterative estimators or trackers. It is shown that the associated variance constitutes the lower bound for the variance of any unbiased estimator based on the sample covariance matrix. The paper formulation is then applied to track the angle-of-arrival (AoA) of multiple digitally-modulated sources by means of a uniform linear array. The optimal second-order tracker is compared with the classical maximum likelihood (ML) blind methods that are shown to be quadratic in the observed data as well. Simulations have confirmed that the discrete nature of the transmitted symbols can be exploited to improve considerably the discrimination of near sources in medium-to-high SNR scenarios.Peer Reviewe

Observer-biased bearing condition monitoring: from fault detection to multi-fault classification

Bearings are simultaneously a fundamental component and one of the principal causes of failure in rotary machinery. The work focuses on the employment of fuzzy clustering for bearing condition monitoring, i.e., fault detection and classification. The output of a clustering algorithm is a data partition (a set of clusters) which is merely a hypothesis on the structure of the data. This hypothesis requires validation by domain experts. In general, clustering algorithms allow a limited usage of domain knowledge on the cluster formation process. In this study, a novel method allowing for interactive clustering in bearing fault diagnosis is proposed. The method resorts to shrinkage to generalize an otherwise unbiased clustering algorithm into a biased one. In this way, the method provides a natural and intuitive way to control the cluster formation process, allowing for the employment of domain knowledge to guiding it. The domain expert can select a desirable level of granularity ranging from fault detection to classification of a variable number of faults and can select a specific region of the feature space for detailed analysis. Moreover, experimental results under realistic conditions show that the adopted algorithm outperforms the corresponding unbiased algorithm (fuzzy c-means) which is being widely used in this type of problems. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Grant number: 145602

Development of damage detection parameters over the lifetime of a rolling element bearing

This paper presents the trends of damage detection parameters over the lifetime of a rolling element bearing. In the experimental part, a series of bearing tests was performed using the twin-disc test device, until the monitored bearing was severely worn. This was followed by the analysis of measured acceleration and acoustic emission data in a constant-load condition, but also as loaded with impact-type loading. The results showed that traditionally used parameters, such as kurtosis and RMS, can indicate whether the bearing is damaged or not in a non-impact load condition. However, especially under impact-loading, the parameters based on acoustic emission data showed good performance and enabled monitoring of progress of the bearing damage

Compensated isocurvature perturbations in the curvaton model

Primordial fluctuations in the relative number densities of particles, or isocurvature perturbations, are generally well constrained by cosmic microwave background (CMB) data. A less probed mode is the compensated isocurvature perturbation (CIP), a fluctuation in the relative number densities of cold dark matter and baryons. In the curvaton model, a subdominant field during inflation later sets the primordial curvature fluctuation $\zeta$. In some curvaton-decay scenarios, the baryon and cold dark matter isocurvature fluctuations nearly cancel, leaving a large CIP correlated with $\zeta$. This correlation can be used to probe these CIPs more sensitively than the uncorrelated CIPs considered in past work, essentially by measuring the squeezed bispectrum of the CMB for triangles whose shortest side is limited by the sound horizon. Here, the sensitivity of existing and future CMB experiments to correlated CIPs is assessed, with an eye towards testing specific curvaton-decay scenarios. The planned CMB Stage 4 experiment could detect the largest CIPs attainable in curvaton scenarios with more than 3$\sigma$ significance. The significance could improve if small-scale CMB polarization foregrounds can be effectively subtracted. As a result, future CMB observations could discriminate between some curvaton-decay scenarios in which baryon number and dark matter are produced during different epochs relative to curvaton decay. Independent of the specific motivation for the origin of a correlated CIP perturbation, cross-correlation of CIP reconstructions with the primary CMB can improve the signal-to-noise ratio of a CIP detection. For fully correlated CIPs the improvement is a factor of $\sim$2$-$3.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, minor changes matching publicatio

Vibration Monitoring: Gearbox identification and faults detection

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

A signal processing methodology for assessing the performance of ASTM standard test methods for GPR systems

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is one of the most promising and effective non-destructive testing techniques (NDTs), particularly for the interpretation of the soil properties. Within the framework of international Agencies dealing with the standardization of NDTs, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) has published several standard test methods related to GPR, none of which is focused on a detailed analysis of the system performance, particularly in terms of precision and bias of the testing variable under consideration. This work proposes a GPR signal processing methodology, calibrated and validated on the basis of a consistent amount of data collected by means of laboratory-scale tests, to assess the performance of the above standard test methods for GPR systems. The (theoretical) expressions of the bias and variance of the estimation error are here investigated by a reduced Taylor's expansion up to the second order. Therefore, a closed form expression for theoretically tuning the optimal threshold according to a fixed target value of the GPR signal stability is proposed. Finally, the study is extended to GPR systems with different antenna frequencies to analyze the specific relationship between the frequency of investigation, the optimal thresholds, and the signal stability

Surveillance vibratoire des machines tournantes en régime non-stationnaires

In the last decades, vibration-based condition monitoring of rotating machine has gained special interest providing an efficient aid for maintenance in the industry. Nowadays, many efficient techniques are well-established, rooted on powerful tools offered in particular by the theory of cyclostationary processes. However, all these techniques rely on the assump-tion of constant— or possibly fluctuating but stationary— operating regime (i.e. speed and/or load). Unfortunately, most monitored machines used in the industry operate under nonstationary regimes in order to fulfill the task for which they have been designed. In this case, these techniques fail in analyzing the produced vibration signals. This issue, therefore, has occupied the scientific committee in the last decade and some sophisticated signal processing techniques have been conceived to deal with regime variability. But these works remain limited, dispersed and generally not supported by theoretical frameworks. The principal goal of this thesis is to partially fill in this gap on the basis of a theoretical formalization of the subject and a systematic development of new dedicated signal processing tools. In this work, the nonstationarity of the regime is confined to that of the speed— i.e. variable speed and constant load, assumed to be known a priori. In order to reach this goal, the adopted methodology consists in extending the cyclostationary framework together with its dedicated tools. We have elaborated this strategy by distinguishing two types of signatures. The first type includes deterministic waveforms known as first-order cyclostationary. The proposed solution consists in generalizing the first-order cyclostationary class to the more general first-order cyclo-non-stationary class which enfolds speed-varying deterministic signals. The second type includes random periodically-correlated waveforms known as second-order cyclostationary. Three different but complementary visions have been proposed to deal with the changes induced by the nonstationarity of the operating speed. The first one adopts an angle\time cyclostationary approach, the second one adopts an envelope-based solution and the third one adopts a (second-order) cyclo-non-stationary approach. Many tools have been conceived whose performances have been successfully tested on simulated and real vibration signals.Dans les dernières décennies, la surveillance vibratoire des machines tournantes a acquis un intérêt particulier fournissant une aide efficace pour la maintenance dans l'industrie. Aujourd'hui, de nombreuses techniques efficaces sont bien établies, ancrées sur des outils puissants offerts notamment par la théorie des processus cyclostationnaires. Cependant, toutes ces techniques reposent sur l'hypothèse d’un régime de fonctionnement (c.à.d. vitesse et/ou charge) constant ou éventuellement fluctuant d’une façon stationnaire. Malheureusement, la plupart des machines surveillées dans l'industrie opèrent sous des régimes non stationnaires afin de remplir les tâches pour lesquelles elles ont été conçues. Dans ce cas, ces techniques ne parviennent pas à analyser les signaux vibratoires produits. Ce problème a occupé la communauté scientifique dans la dernière décennie et des techniques sophistiquées de traitement du signal ont été conçues pour faire face à la variabilité du régime. Mais ces tentatives restent limitées, dispersées et généralement peu soutenues par un cadre théorique. Le principal objectif de cette thèse est de combler partiellement cette lacune sur la base d'une formalisation théorique du sujet et d’un développement systématique de nouveaux outils de traitement du signal. Dans ce travail, la non-stationnarité du régime est limitée à celle de la vitesse— c.à.d. vitesse variable et charge constante— supposée connue a priori. Afin d'atteindre cet objectif, la méthodologie adoptée consiste à étendre le cadre cyclostationnaire avec ses outils dédiés. Nous avons élaboré cette stratégie en distinguant deux types de signatures. Le premier type comprend des signaux déterministes connus comme cyclostationnaires au premier ordre. La solution proposée consiste à généraliser la classe cyclostationnaire au premier ordre à la classe cyclo-non-stationnaire au premier ordre qui comprend des signaux déterministes en vitesse variable. Le second type comprend des signaux aléatoires périodiquement corrélés connus comme cyclostationnaires au deuxième ordre. Trois visions différentes mais complémentaires ont été proposées pour traiter les variations induites par la non-stationnarité de la vitesse de fonctionnement. La première adopte une approche cyclostationnaire angle\temps, la seconde une solution basée sur l'enveloppe et la troisième une approche cyclo-non-stationnaire (au second ordre). De nombreux outils ont été conçus dont les performances ont été testées avec succès sur des signaux vibratoires réels et simulés

Development of new fault detection methods for rotating machines (roller bearings)

Abstract Early fault diagnosis of roller bearings is extremely important for rotating machines, especially for high speed, automatic and precise machines. Many research efforts have been focused on fault diagnosis and detection of roller bearings, since they constitute one the most important elements of rotating machinery. In this study a combination method is proposed for early damage detection of roller bearing. Wavelet packet transform (WPT) is applied to the collected data for denoising and the resulting clean data are break-down into some elementary components called Intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) method. The normalized energy of three first IMFs are used as input for Support vector machine (SVM) to recognize whether signals are sorting out from healthy or faulty bearings. Then, since there is no robust guide to determine amplitude of added noise in EEMD technique, a new Performance improved EEMD (PIEEMD) is proposed to determine the appropriate value of added noise. A novel feature extraction method is also proposed for detecting small size defect using Teager-Kaiser energy operator (TKEO). TKEO is applied to IMFs obtained to create new feature vectors as input data for one-class SVM. The results of applying the method to acceleration signals collected from an experimental bearing test rig demonstrated that the method can be successfully used for early damage detection of roller bearings. Most of the diagnostic methods that have been developed up to now can be applied for the case stationary working conditions only (constant speed and load). However, bearings often work at time-varying conditions such as wind turbine supporting bearings, mining excavator bearings, vehicles, robots and all processes with run-up and run-down transients. Damage identification for bearings working under non-stationary operating conditions, especially for early/small defects, requires the use of appropriate techniques, which are generally different from those used for the case of stationary conditions, in order to extract fault-sensitive features which are at the same time insensitive to operational condition variations. Some methods have been proposed for damage detection of bearings working under time-varying speed conditions. However, their application might increase the instrumentation cost because of providing a phase reference signal. Furthermore, some methods such as order tracking methods still can be applied when the speed variation is limited. In this study, a novel combined method based on cointegration is proposed for the development of fault features which are sensitive to the presence of defects while in the same time they are insensitive to changes in the operational conditions. It does not require any additional measurements and can identify defects even for considerable speed variations. The signals acquired during run-up condition are decomposed into IMFs using the performance improved EEMD method. Then, the cointegration method is applied to the intrinsic mode functions to extract stationary residuals. The feature vectors are created by applying the Teager-Kaiser energy operator to the obtained stationary residuals. Finally, the feature vectors of the healthy bearing signals are utilized to construct a separating hyperplane using one-class support vector machine. Eventually the proposed method was applied to vibration signals measured on an experimental bearing test rig. The results verified that the method can successfully distinguish between healthy and faulty bearings even if the shaft speed changes dramatically

Induction Motors

AC motors play a major role in modern industrial applications. Squirrel-cage induction motors (SCIMs) are probably the most frequently used when compared to other AC motors because of their low cost, ruggedness, and low maintenance. The material presented in this book is organized into four sections, covering the applications and structural properties of induction motors (IMs), fault detection and diagnostics, control strategies, and the more recently developed topology based on the multiphase (more than three phases) induction motors. This material should be of specific interest to engineers and researchers who are engaged in the modeling, design, and implementation of control algorithms applied to induction motors and, more generally, to readers broadly interested in nonlinear control, health condition monitoring, and fault diagnosis

Sensor Signal and Information Processing II

In the current age of information explosion, newly invented technological sensors and software are now tightly integrated with our everyday lives. Many sensor processing algorithms have incorporated some forms of computational intelligence as part of their core framework in problem solving. These algorithms have the capacity to generalize and discover knowledge for themselves and learn new information whenever unseen data are captured. The primary aim of sensor processing is to develop techniques to interpret, understand, and act on information contained in the data. The interest of this book is in developing intelligent signal processing in order to pave the way for smart sensors. This involves mathematical advancement of nonlinear signal processing theory and its applications that extend far beyond traditional techniques. It bridges the boundary between theory and application, developing novel theoretically inspired methodologies targeting both longstanding and emergent signal processing applications. The topic ranges from phishing detection to integration of terrestrial laser scanning, and from fault diagnosis to bio-inspiring filtering. The book will appeal to established practitioners, along with researchers and students in the emerging field of smart sensors processing