Prognosis of a Wind Turbine Gearbox Bearing Using Supervised Machine Learning

Deployment of large-scale wind turbines requires sophisticated operation and maintenance strategies to ensure the devices are safe, profitable and cost-effective. Prognostics aims to predict the remaining useful life (RUL) of physical systems based on condition measurements. Analyzing condition monitoring data, implementing diagnostic techniques and using machinery prognostic algorithms will bring about accurate estimation of the remaining life and possible failures that may occur. This paper proposes to combine two supervised machine learning techniques, namely, regression model and multilayer artificial neural network model, to predict the RUL of an operational wind turbine gearbox using vibration measurements. Root Mean Square (RMS), Kurtosis (KU) and Energy Index (EI) were analysed to define the bearing failure stages. The proposed methodology was evaluated through a case study involving vibration measurements of a high-speed shaft bearing used in a wind turbine gearbox

Intelligent Health Monitoring of Machine Bearings Based on Feature Extraction

This document is the Accepted Manuscript of the following article: Mohammed Chalouli, Nasr-eddine Berrached, and Mouloud Denai, ‘Intelligent Health Monitoring of Machine Bearings Based on Feature Extraction’, Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention, Vol. 17 (5): 1053-1066, October 2017. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 31 August 2018. The final publication is available at Springer via DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11668-017-0343-y.Finding reliable condition monitoring solutions for large-scale complex systems is currently a major challenge in industrial research. Since fault diagnosis is directly related to the features of a system, there have been many research studies aimed to develop methods for the selection of the relevant features. Moreover, there are no universal features for a particular application domain such as machine diagnosis. For example, in machine bearing fault diagnosis, these features are often selected by an expert or based on previous experience. Thus, for each bearing machine type, the relevant features must be selected. This paper attempts to solve the problem of relevant features identification by building an automatic fault diagnosis process based on relevant feature selection using a data-driven approach. The proposed approach starts with the extraction of the time-domain features from the input signals. Then, a feature reduction algorithm based on cross-correlation filter is applied to reduce the time and cost of the processing. Unsupervised learning mechanism using K-means++ selects the relevant fault features based on the squared Euclidian distance between different health states. Finally, the selected features are used as inputs to a self-organizing map producing our health indicator. The proposed method is tested on roller bearing benchmark datasets.Peer reviewe

Contribution au pronostic de défaillances guidé par des données

Ce mémoire d’Habilitation à Diriger des Recherche (HDR) présente, dans la première partie, une synthèse de mes travaux d’enseignement et de recherche réalisés au sein de l’École Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et des Microtechniques (ENSMM) et de l’Institut FEMTO-ST. Ces travaux s’inscrivent dans la thématique du PHM (Prognostics and Health Management) et concernent le développement d’une approche intégrée de pronostic de défaillances guidée par des données. L’approche proposée repose sur l’acquisition de données représentatives des dégradations de systèmes physiques, l’extraction de caractéristiques pertinentes et la construction d’indicateurs de santé, la modélisation des dégradations, l’évaluation de l’état de santé et la prédiction de durées de fonctionnement avant défaillances (RUL : Remaining Useful Life). Elle fait appel à deux familles d’outils : d’un côté des outils probabilistes/stochastiques, tels que les réseaux Bayésiens dynamiques, et de l’autre côté les modèles de régression non linéaires, notamment les machines à vecteurs de support pour la régression. La seconde partie du mémoire présente le projet de recherche autour du PHM de systèmes complexes et de MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems), avec une orientation vers l’approche de pronostic hybride en combinant l’approche guidée par des données et l’approche basée sur des modèles physiques.This Habilitation manuscript presents, in the first part, a synthesis of my teaching and research works achieved at the National Institute of Mechanics and Microtechnologies (ENSMM) and at FEMTO-ST Institute. These works are within the topic of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) and concern the development of an integrated data-driven failure prognostic approach. The proposed approach relies on acquisition of data which are representative of systems degradations, extraction of relevant features and construction of health indicators, degradation modeling, health assessment and Remaining Useful Life (RUL) prediction. This approach uses two groups of tools: probabilistic/stochastic tools, such as dynamic Bayesian networks, from one hand, and nonlinear regression models such as support vector machine for regression and Gaussian process regression, from the other hand. The second part of the manuscript presents the research project related to PHM of complex systems and MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems), with an orientation towards a hybrid prognostic approach by considering both model-based and data-driven approaches

Rolling bearing health assessment using only normal samples

To take maintenance measures timely and to prolong the lifetime of a bearing as a whole, bearing users need to know the current health state of the bearing. Those existing methods for health assessment are mostly based on fault samples and/or decline samples of bearings. However, the bearings are always not allowed to fail in the practical engineering application in consideration of the enormous harms and great damages might be caused by the bearing fault. So the fault samples or decline samples of bearing are often lacking. In this point of view, this paper presents a quantificational health assessment method for rolling bearing based solely on normal samples and SOM network. To demonstrate the capability of the proposed method, a series of vibration datasets of the bearings under various health states were employed to conduct case study. And this paper expresses the uncertainty of assessment results after training for many times by the probability density function (PDF)

A framework development to predict remaining useful life of a gas turbine mechanical component

Power-by-the-hour is a performance based offering for delivering outstanding service to operators of civil aviation aircraft. Operators need to guarantee to minimise downtime, reduce service cost and ensure value for money which requires an innovative advanced technology for predictive maintenance. Predictability, availability and reliability of the engine offers better service for operators, and the need to estimate the expected component failure prior to failure occurrence requires a proactive approach to predict the remaining useful life of components within an assembly. This research offers a framework for component remaining useful life prediction using assembly level data. The thesis presents a critical analysis on literature identifying the Weibull method, statistical technique and data-driven methodology relating to remaining useful life prediction, which are used in this research. The AS-IS practice captures relevant information based on the investigation conducted in the aerospace industry. The analysis of maintenance cycles relates to the examination of high-level events for engine availability, whereby more communications with industry showcase a through-life performance timeline visualisation. Overhaul sequence and activities are presented to gain insights of the timeline visualisation. The thesis covers the framework development and application to gas turbine single stage assembly, repair and replacement of components in single stage assembly, and multiple stage assembly. The framework is demonstrated in aerospace engines and power generation engines. The framework developed enables and supports domain experts to quickly respond to, and prepare for maintenance and on-time delivery of spare parts. The results of the framework show the probability of failure based on a pair of error values using the corresponding Scale and Shape parameters. The probability of failure is transformed into the remaining useful life depicting a typical Weibull distribution. The resulting Weibull curves developed with three scenarios of the case shows there are components renewals, therefore, the remaining useful life of the components are established. The framework is validated and verified through a case study with three scenarios and also through expert judgement

ADVANCES IN SYSTEM RELIABILITY-BASED DESIGN AND PROGNOSTICS AND HEALTH MANAGEMENT (PHM) FOR SYSTEM RESILIENCE ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

Failures of engineered systems can lead to significant economic and societal losses. Despite tremendous efforts (e.g., $200 billion annually) denoted to reliability and maintenance, unexpected catastrophic failures still occurs. To minimize the losses, reliability of engineered systems must be ensured throughout their life-cycle amidst uncertain operational condition and manufacturing variability. In most engineered systems, the required system reliability level under adverse events is achieved by adding system redundancies and/or conducting system reliability-based design optimization (RBDO). However, a high level of system redundancy increases a system's life-cycle cost (LCC) and system RBDO cannot ensure the system reliability when unexpected loading/environmental conditions are applied and unexpected system failures are developed. In contrast, a new design paradigm, referred to as resilience-driven system design, can ensure highly reliable system designs under any loading/environmental conditions and system failures while considerably reducing systems' LCC. In order to facilitate the development of formal methodologies for this design paradigm, this research aims at advancing two essential and co-related research areas: Research Thrust 1 - system RBDO and Research Thrust 2 - system prognostics and health management (PHM). In Research Thrust 1, reliability analyses under uncertainty will be carried out in both component and system levels against critical failure mechanisms. In Research Thrust 2, highly accurate and robust PHM systems will be designed for engineered systems with a single or multiple time-scale(s). To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system RBDO and PHM techniques, multiple engineering case studies will be presented and discussed. Following the development of Research Thrusts 1 and 2, Research Thrust 3 - resilience-driven system design will establish a theoretical basis and design framework of engineering resilience in a mathematical and statistical context, where engineering resilience will be formulated in terms of system reliability and restoration and the proposed design framework will be demonstrated with a simplified aircraft control actuator design problem

RMS Based Health Indicators for Remaining Useful Lifetime Estimation of Bearings

Estimating the remaining useful life (RUL) of bearings from healthy to faulty is important for predictive maintenance. The bearing fault severity can be estimated based on the energy or root mean square (RMS) of vibration signals, and a stopping criterion can be set based on a threshold given by an ISO standard. However, the vibration RMS is often not monotonically increasing with damage, which renders a challenge for predicting the RUL. This study proposes a novel method for splitting the vibration signal into multiple frequency bands before RMS calculations to generate multiple health indicators. Monotonic health indicators are identified using the Spearman coefficient, and the RUL is afterward estimated for each indicator using a suitable model and parameter update scheme. Historical failure data is not required to set any parameters. The proposed method is tested with the Paris' law, where parameters are updated by particle filters. Experimental results from two test rigs validate the performance of the proposed method.publishedVersio

Hybrid Stochastic Models for Remaining Lifetime Prognosis

The United States Air Force is developing its next generation aircraft and is seeking to reduce the risk of catastrophic failures, maintenance activities, and the logistics footprint while improving its sortie generation rate through a process called autonomic logistics. Vital to the successful implementation of this process is remaining lifetime prognosis of critical aircraft components. Complicating this problem is the absence of failure time information; however, sensors located on the aircraft are providing degradation measures. This research has provided a method to address at least a portion of this problem by uniting analytical lifetime distribution models with environment and/or degradation measures to obtain the remaining lifetime distribution

Fault Diagnosis and Failure Prognostics of Lithium-ion Battery based on Least Squares Support Vector Machine and Memory Particle Filter Framework

123456A novel data driven approach is developed for fault diagnosis and remaining useful life (RUL) prognostics for lithium-ion batteries using Least Square Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) and Memory-Particle Filter (M-PF). Unlike traditional data-driven models for capacity fault diagnosis and failure prognosis, which require multidimensional physical characteristics, the proposed algorithm uses only two variables: Energy Efficiency (EE), and Work Temperature. The aim of this novel framework is to improve the accuracy of incipient and abrupt faults diagnosis and failure prognosis. First, the LSSVM is used to generate residual signal based on capacity fade trends of the Li-ion batteries. Second, adaptive threshold model is developed based on several factors including input, output model error, disturbance, and drift parameter. The adaptive threshold is used to tackle the shortcoming of a fixed threshold. Third, the M-PF is proposed as the new method for failure prognostic to determine Remaining Useful Life (RUL). The M-PF is based on the assumption of the availability of real-time observation and historical data, where the historical failure data can be used instead of the physical failure model within the particle filter. The feasibility of the framework is validated using Li-ion battery prognostic data obtained from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Prognostic Center of Excellence (PCoE). The experimental results show the following: (1) fewer data dimensions for the input data are required compared to traditional empirical models; (2) the proposed diagnostic approach provides an effective way of diagnosing Li-ion battery fault; (3) the proposed prognostic approach can predict the RUL of Li-ion batteries with small error, and has high prediction accuracy; and, (4) the proposed prognostic approach shows that historical failure data can be used instead of a physical failure model in the particle filter