A Digital Triplet for Utilizing Offline Environments to Train Condition Monitoring Systems for Rolling Element Bearings

Manufacturing competitiveness is related to making a quality product while incurring the lowest costs. Unexpected downtime caused by equipment failure negatively impacts manufacturing competitiveness due to the ensuing defects and delays caused by the downtime. Manufacturers have adopted condition monitoring (CM) techniques to reduce unexpected downtime to augment maintenance strategies. The CM adoption has transitioned maintenance from Breakdown Maintenance (BM) to Condition-Based Maintenance (CbM) to anticipate impending failures and provide maintenance actions before equipment failure. CbM is the umbrella term for maintenance strategies that use condition monitoring techniques such as Preventive Maintenance (PM) and Predictive Maintenance (PdM). Preventive Maintenance involves providing periodic checks based on either time or sensory input. Predictive Maintenance utilizes continuous or periodic sensory inputs to determine the machine health state to predict the equipment failure. The overall goal of the work is to improve bearing diagnostic and prognostic predictions for equipment health by utilizing surrogate systems to generate failure data that represents production equipment failure, thereby providing training data for condition monitoring solutions without waiting for real world failure data. This research seeks to address the challenges of obtaining failure data for CM systems by incorporating a third system into monitoring strategies to create a Digital Triplet (DTr) for condition monitoring to increase the amount of possible data for condition monitoring. Bearings are a critical component in rotational manufacturing systems with wide application to other industries outside of manufacturing, such as energy and defense. The reinvented DTr system considers three components: the physical, surrogate, and digital systems. The physical system represents the real-world application in production that cannot fail. The surrogate system represents a physical component in a test system in an offline environment where data is generated to fill in gaps from data unavailable in the real-world system. The digital system is the CM system, which provides maintenance recommendations based on the ingested data from the real world and surrogate systems. In pursuing the research goal, a comprehensive bearing dataset detailing these four failure modes over different collection operating parameters was created. Subsequently, the collections occurred under different operating conditions, such as speed-varying, load-varying, and steadystate. Different frequency and time measures were used to analyze and identify differentiating criteria between the different failure classes over the differing operating conditions. These empirical observations were recreated using simulations to filter out potential outliers. The outputs of the physical model were combined with knowledge from the empirical observations to create ”spectral deltas” to augment existing bearing data and create new failure data that resemble similar frequency criteria to the original data. The primary verification occurred on a laboratory-bearing test stand. A conjecture is provided on how to scale to a larger system by analyzing a larger system from a local manufacturer. From the subsequent analysis of machine learning diagnosis and prognosis models, the original and augmented bearing data can complement each other during model training. The subsequent data substitution verifies that bearing data collected under different operating conditions and sizes can be substituted between different systems. Ostensibly, the full formulation of the digital triplet system is that bearing data generated at a smaller size can be scaled to train predictive failure models for larger bearing sizes. Future work should consider implementing this method for other systems outside of bearings, such as gears, non-rotational equipment, such as pumps, or even larger complex systems, such as computer numerically controlled machine tools or car engines. In addition, the method and process should not be restricted to only mechanical systems and could be applied to electrical systems, such as batteries. Furthermore, an investigation should consider further data-driven approximations to specific bearing characteristics related to the stiffness and damping parameters needed in modeling. A final consideration is for further investigation into the scalability quantities within the data and how to track these changes through different system levels

An explainable AI-based fault diagnosis model for bearings.

In this paper, an explainable AI-based fault diagnosis model for bearings is proposed with five stages, i.e., (1) a data preprocessing method based on the Stockwell Transformation Coefficient (STC) is proposed to analyze the vibration signals for variable speed and load conditions, (2) a statistical feature extraction method is introduced to capture the significance from the invariant pattern of the analyzed data by STC, (3) an explainable feature selection process is proposed by introducing a wrapper-based feature selector—Boruta, (4) a feature filtration method is considered on the top of the feature selector to avoid the multicollinearity problem, and finally, (5) an additive Shapley ex-planation followed by k-NN is proposed to diagnose and to explain the individual decision of the k-NN classifier for debugging the performance of the diagnosis model. Thus, the idea of explaina-bility is introduced for the first time in the field of bearing fault diagnosis in two steps: (a) incorpo-rating explainability to the feature selection process, and (b) interpretation of the classifier performance with respect to the selected features. The effectiveness of the proposed model is demon-strated on two different datasets obtained from separate bearing testbeds. Lastly, an assessment of several state-of-the-art fault diagnosis algorithms in rotating machinery is included

Condition monitoring of induction motors in the nuclear power station environment

The induction motor is a highly utilised electrical machine in industry, with the nuclear industry being no exception. A typical nuclear power station usually contains more than 1000 motors, where they are used in safety and non-safety application. The efficient and fault-free operation of this machine is critical to the safe and economical operation of any plant, including nuclear power stations. A comprehensive literature review was conducted that covered the functioning of the induction machine, its common faults and methods of detecting these faults. The Condition Based Maintenance framework was introduced in which condition monitoring of induction machines is an essential component. The main condition monitoring methods were explained with the main focus being on Motor Current Signature Analysis (MCSA) and the various methods associated with it. Three analysis methods were selected for further study, namely, Current Signature Analysis, Instantaneous Power Signature Analysis (IPSA) and Motor Square Current Signature Analysis (MSCSA). Essentially, the methodology used in this dissertation was to study the three common motor faults (bearings, stator and rotor cage) in isolation and compare the results to that of the healthy motor of the same type. The test loads as well as fault severity were varied where possible to investigate its effect on the fault detection scheme. The data was processed using an FFT based algorithm programed in MATLAB. The results of the study of the three spectral analysis techniques showed that no single technique is able to detect motor faults under all tested circumstances. The MCSA technique proved the most capable of the three techniques as it was able to detect faults under most conditions, but generally suffered poor results in inverter driven motor applications. The IPSA and MSCSA techniques performed selectively when compared to MCSA and were relatively successful when detecting the mechanical faults. The fact that the former techniques produce results at unique points in the spectrum would suggest that they are more suitable for verifying results. As part of a comprehensive condition monitoring scheme, as required by a large population of the motors on a nuclear power station, the three techniques presented in this study could readily be incorporated into the Condition Based Maintenance framework where the strengths of each could be exploited

A multitask-aided transfer learning-based diagnostic framework for bearings under inconsistent working conditions.

Rolling element bearings are a vital part of rotating machines and their sudden failure can result in huge economic losses as well as physical causalities. Popular bearing fault diagnosis techniques include statistical feature analysis of time, frequency, or time-frequency domain data. These engineered features are susceptible to variations under inconsistent machine operation due to the non-stationary, non-linear, and complex nature of the recorded vibration signals. To address these issues, numerous deep learning-based frameworks have been proposed in the literature. However, the logical reasoning behind crack severities and the longer training times needed to identify multiple health characteristics at the same time still pose challenges. Therefore, in this work, a diagnosis framework is proposed that uses higher-order spectral analysis and multitask learning (MTL), while also incorporating transfer learning (TL). The idea is to first preprocess the vibration signals recorded from a bearing to look for distinct patterns for a given fault type under inconsistent working conditions, e.g., variable motor speeds and loads, multiple crack severities, compound faults, and ample noise. Later, these bispectra are provided as an input to the proposed MTL-based convolutional neural network (CNN) to identify the speed and the health conditions, simultaneously. Finally, the TL-based approach is adopted to identify bearing faults in the presence of multiple crack severities. The proposed diagnostic framework is evaluated on several datasets and the experimental results are compared with several state-of-the-art diagnostic techniques to validate the superiority of the proposed model under inconsistent working conditions

The Optimization of Vibration Data Analysis for the Detection and Diagnosis of Incipient Faults in Roller Bearings

The rolling element bearing is a key component of many machines. Accurate and timely diagnosis of its faults is critical for proactive predictive maintenance. The research described in this thesis focuses on the development of techniques for detecting and diagnosing incipient bearing faults. These techniques are based on improved dynamic models and enhanced signal processing algorithms. Various common fault detection techniques for rolling element bearings are reviewed in this work and a detailed experimental investigation is described for several selected methods. Envelope analysis is widely used to obtain the bearing defect harmonics from the spectrum of the envelope of a vibration signal. This enables the detection and diagnosis of faults, and has shown good results in identifying incipient faults occurring on the different parts of a bearing. However, a critical step in implementing envelope analysis is to determine the frequency band that contains the signal component corresponding to the bearing fault (the one with highest signal to noise ratio). The choice of filter band is conventionally made via manual inspection of the spectrum to identify the resonant frequency where the largest change has occurred. In this work, a spectral kurtosis (SK) method is enhanced to enable determination of the optimum envelope analysis parameters, including the filter band and centre frequency, through a short time Fourier transform (STFT). The results show that the maximum amplitude of the kurtogram indicates the optimal parameters of band pass filter that allows both outer race and inner race faults to be determined from the optimised envelope spectrum. A performance evaluation is carried out on the kurtogram and the fast kurtogram, based on a simulated impact signal masked by different noise levels. This shows that as the signal to noise ratio (SNR) reaches as low as -5dB the STFT-based kurtogram is more effective at identifying periodic components due to bearing faults, and is less influenced by irregular noise pulses than the wavelet based fast kurtogram. A study of the accuracy of rolling-bearing diagnostic features in detecting bearing wear processes and monitoring fault sizes is presented for a range of radial clearances. Subsequently, a nonlinear dynamic model of a deep groove ball bearing with five degrees of freedom is developed. The model incorporates local defects and clearance increments in order to gain the insight into the bearing dynamics. Simulation results indicate that the vibrations at fault characteristic frequencies exhibit significant variability for increasing clearances. An increased vibration level is detected at the bearing characteristic frequency for an outer race fault, whereas a decreased vibration level is found for an inner race fault. Outcomes of laboratory experiments on several bearing clearance grades, with different local defects, are used herein for model validation purposes. The experimental validation indicates that the envelope spectrum is not accurate enough to quantify the rolling element bearing fault severity adequately. To improve the results, a new method has been developed by combining a conventional bispectrum (CB) and modulation signal bispectrum (MSB) with envelope analysis. This suppresses the inevitable noise in the envelope signal, and hence provides more accurate diagnostic features. Both the simulation and the experimental results show that MSB extracts small changes from a faulty bearing more reliably, enabling more accurate and reliable fault severity diagnosis. Moreover, the vibration amplitudes at the fault characteristic frequencies exhibit significant changes with increasing clearance. However, the vibration amplitude tends to increase with the severity of an outer race fault and decrease with the severity of an inner race fault. It is therefore necessary to take these effects into account when diagnosing the size of a defect

Diagnosis of low-speed bearings via vibration-based entropy indicators and acoustic emissions

Tesi del Pla de doctorat industrial de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Tesi en modalitat compendi de publicacions, amb diferents seccions retallades per drets dels editorsWind energy is one ofthe main renewable energies to replace fossil fuels in the generation of electricityworldwide. To enhance and accelerate its implementation at a large scale, it is vital to reduce the costs associated with maintenance. As com ponent breakages force the turbine to stop for long repair times, the wind industry m ust switch from the old-fashioned preventive or corrective maintenance to condition-based maintenance (also called predictive maintenance). The condition­based maintenance of pitch bearings is especiallychallenging, as the operating conditions include high mechanical stress and low rotational speed. Since these operating conditions im pact negatively on the results of the standard methods and techniques applied in current condition-based monitoring systems, the condition-based maintenance of pitch bearings is still a challenge. Therefore, this thes is is focused on the research of novel methods and techniques that obtain reliable information on the state of pitch bearings for condition-based maintenance. lnitially, the acknowledgment ofthe state ofthe art is performed to recognize the methods and signals. This step endorses the decision to analyze the vibration signals and acoustic emissions throughout this thesis. Due to the particular operating conditions of pitch bearings, this research states the need to create data sets to replicate the particular operating conditions in a controlled laboratory experiment. As a res ult, a datas et based on vibrations, and a second datas et based on acoustic emissions are generated. The vibration datas et allows the validation of a novel algorithm for the low-speed bearing diagnosis, which is based on the concept of entropy by the definition of Shannon and Rényi. In com parison to the classical methods found in the literature, the diagnosis of low-speed bearings based on entropy-based indicators can extract more reliable information. Moreover, the research of the com bination of several indicators to improve the diagnosis revea Is that the entropy-based indicators can extract more information than regular indicators used in academia. The datas et of acoustic emissions from low-speed bearings helps to contribute to the development of methods for diagnosis. In this research, the analysis of the energyfrom the signals reveals a dependencyon the intensityand the presence of damage. In addition, a relation between the waveform ofthe analyzed energy and the existence of damage is em phas ized.La energía eólica es una de las principales energías renovables consideradas para reemplazar los combustibles fósiles en la generación de electricidad a nivel mundial. Para mejorar y acelerar su implementación a gran escala, es vital reducir los costes asociados con el mantenimiento. Como las roturas de los componentes obligan a la turbina a detenerse durante largos períodos de reparación, la industria eólica necesita cambiar del anticuado mantenimiento preventiv o correctivo al mantenimiento basado en la condición (también llamado mantenimiento predictivo). El mantenimiento basado en la condición de los rodamientos pitch es especialmente desafiante, porque las condiciones de operación incluyen un alto estrés mecánico y bajas velocidades de rotación. Debido a que estas condiciones de operación impactan negativamente en los resultados de los métodos y técnicas estándar aplicados en los sistemas actuales de monitoreo basados en el estado, el mantenimiento basado en el estado de los rodamientos pitch sigue siendo un desafío. Por tanto, esta tesis se centra en la investigación de métodos y técnicas novedosas que obtengan información fiable sobre el estado de los rodamientos pitch para el mantenimiento basado en la condición. Inicialmente, se realiza el reconocimiento del estado del arte para reconocer los métodos y señales utilizados. Este paso avala la decisión de analizar las señales de vibración y las emisiones acústicas a lo largo de esta tesis. Debido a las condiciones de funcionamiento particulares de los rodamientos pitch, esta investigación reconoce la necesidad de crear un conjunto de datos para replicar las condiciones de funcionamiento particulares del rodamiento pitch en una experiencia de laboratorio controlado. Como resultado, se genera un conjunto de datos basado en vibraciones y un segundo conjunto de datos basado en emisiones acústicas. El conjunto de datos de vibraciones permite la validación de un algoritmo novedoso para el diagnóstico de rodamientos de baja velocidad, el cual se basa en el concepto de la entropía según la definición de Shannon y Rényi. En comparación con los métodos clásicos que se encuentran en la literatura, el diagnóstico de rodamientos de baja velocidad basado en indicadores basados en la entropía puede extraer información más confiable. Además, la investigación de la combinación de varios indicadores para mejorar el diagnóstico revela que los indicadores basados en la entropía pueden extraer más información que los indicadores habituales utilizados en la academia. El conjunto de datos de las emisiones acústicas de los rodamientos de baja velocidad ayuda a contribuir al desarrollo de métodos de diagnóstico. En esta investigación, el análisis de la energía de las señales revela una dependencia de la intensidad y la presencia de daño. Además, se enfatiza una relación entre la forma de onda de la energía analizada y la existencia de daño.L'energia eòlica és una de les principals energies renovables considerades per reemplaçar els combustibles fòssils en la generació d'electricitat a nivell mundial. Per millorar i accelerar la seva implementació a gran escala, és vital reduir els costos associats amb el manteniment. Com els trencaments dels components obliguen a la turbina a aturar-se durant llargs períodes de reparació, la industria eòlica necessita canviar de l'antiquat manteniment preventiu o correctiu al manteniment basat en la condició (també anomenat manteniment predictiu). El manteniment basat en la condició dels rodaments de pas és especialment desafiant, perquè les condicions d’operació inclouen un alt estrès mecànic i baixes velocitats de rotació. A causa de que aquestes condicions d’operació impacten negativament en els resultats dels mètodes i tècniques estàndard aplicats en els sistemes actuals de monitorització basats en l'estat, el manteniment basat en l'estat dels rodaments de pas segueix sent un desafiament. Per tant, aquesta tesi se centra en la investigació de mètodes i tècniques noves que obtinguin informació fiable sobre l'estat dels rodaments de pas per al manteniment basat en la condició. Inicialment, es realitza el reconeixement de l'estat de l'art per reconèixer els mètodes i senyals utilitzats. Aquest pas avala la decisió d'analitzar els senyals de vibració i les emissions acústiques al llarg d'aquesta tesi. A causa de les condicions de funcionament particulars dels rodaments de pas, aquesta investigació reconeix la necessitat de crear un conjunt de dades per replicar les condicions de funcionament particulars del rodament de pas en un experiment de laboratori controlat. Com a resultat, es genera un conjunt de dades basat en vibracions i un segon conjunt de dades basat en emissions acústiques. El conjunt de dades de vibracions permet la validació d'un algoritme nou per al diagnòstic de rodaments de baixa velocitat, el qual es basa en el concepte de l'entropia segons la definició de Shannon i Renyi. En comparació amb els mètodes clàssics que es troben a la literatura, el diagnòstic de rodaments de baixa velocitat basat en indicadors basats en l'entropia pot extreure informació més fiable. A més, la investigació de la combinació de diversos indicadors per millorar el diagnòstic revela que els indicadors basats en l'entropia poden extreure més informació que els indicadors habituals utilitzats en la literatura. El conjunt de dades de les emissions acústiques dels rodaments de baixa velocitat ajuda a contribuir al desenvolupament de mètodes de diagnòstic. En aquesta investigació, l’anàlisi de l'energia de les senyals revela una dependència de la intensitat i la presència de dany. A més, s'emfatitza una relació entre la forma d'ona de l'energia analitzada i l’existència de dany.Energia eolikoa mundu mailan elektrizitatea sortu eta erregai fosilak ordezkatzeko energia berriztagarri nagusietako bat da. Eskala handiko ezarpena hobetu eta bizkortzeko, ezinbestekoa da mantentze-lanekin lotutako kostuak murriztea. Osagaien hausturek turbina konponketa-aldi luzeetan gelditzera behartzen dutenez, industria eolikoak mantentze-lan prebentibo edo zuzentzaile zaharkitutik egoeran oinarritutako mantentzelanetara aldatu behar du (mantentze-lan prediktiboa ere esaten zaio). Pitch errodamenduen egoeran oinarritutako mantentzea bereziki desa atzailea da, tentsio mekaniko handiak jasaten baitituzte eta errotazio-abiadura txikietan egoten baitira abian. Operaziobaldintza horiek eragin negatiboa dutenez egoeran oinarritutako egungo monitorizazio sistemetan erabiltzen diren metodo eta teknika estandarren emaitzetan, pitch errodamenduen egoeran oinarritutako mantentze-lanak erronka bat izaten jarraitzen du. Tesi hau egoeran oinarritutako mantenurako pitch errodamenduen egoerari buruzko informazio dagarria lortzen duten metodo eta teknika berritzaileen ikerketan oinarritzen da. Hasieran, teknologiaren egungo egoera aztertzen da, erabilitako metodoak eta seinaleak ezagutzeko. Urrats honek tesi honetan zehar bibrazio-seinaleak eta emisio akustikoak aztertzeko erabakia bermatzen du. Pitch errodamenduen funtzionamendu baldintza bereziak direla eta, ikerketa honek adierazten du beharrezkoa dela datu multzo bat sortzea pitch errodamenduaren funtzionamendu baldintza partikularrak erreplikatzeko laborategi kontrolatuko testuinguru batean. Ondorioz, bibrazioetan oinarritutako datu-multzo bat eta emisio akustikoetan oinarritutako bigarren datu-multzo bat sortzen dira. Bibrazioen datu-multzoak abiadura txikiko errodamenduen diagnostikorako algoritmo berritzaile bat baliozkotzea ahalbidetzen du, zeina entropiaren kontzeptuan oinarritzen baita Shannon eta R enyiren de nizioaren arabera. Literaturan dauden metodo klasikoekin alderatuta, entropian oinarritutako adierazleek abiadura txikiko errodamenduen diagnostikorako informazio dagarriagoa atera dezakete. Gainera, diagnostikoa hobetzeko hainbat adierazleren konbinazioaren ikerketak agerian uzten du entropian oinarritutako adierazleek akademian erabiltzen diren ohiko adierazleek baino informazio gehiago atera dezaketela. Abiadura txikiko errodamenduen emisio akustikoen datu multzoak diagnostiko metodoak garatzen laguntzen du. Ikerketa lan honetan, seinaleen energiaren azterketak intentsitatearekiko eta kaltearen presentziarekiko dependentzia adierazten du. Gainera, aztertutako energiaren uhin-formaren eta kaltearen arteko erlazioa nabarmentzen da.Postprint (published version