A novel method for self-adaptive feature extraction using scaling crossover characteristics of signals and combining with LS-SVM for multi-fault diagnosis of gearbox
Vibration signals of defective gears are usually non-stationary and masked by noise. As a result, the feature extraction of gear fault data is always an intractable problem, especially for multi-fault couple system (two or more fault types simultaneously occur in mechanical systems). Recently, an interesting crossover characteristic of nonlinear data is used to diagnose the different severities of gear faults. Nonetheless, it lacks of self-adaptivity. Consequently, a novel method for self-adaptive feature extraction using scaling crossover characteristics of signals and combining with least square support vector machine (LS-SVM) for multi-fault diagnosis of gearbox is proposed. Firstly, detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is introduced to analyze fractal properties and multi-scaling behaviors of vibration signal from multi-fault gearbox. The scale exponents are abrupt changed with the gradual increasing of time scales, which can be observed in the scaling-law curve. Secondly, a criterion based on a Quasi-Monte Carlo algorithm is developed to uncover optimal scaling intervals of scaling-law curve. Several different scaling regions are objectively measured in each of which a single scale exponent can be estimated. Thirdly, a three-dimensional vector, containing three scale exponents which carry definite physical meaning, is used as the feature parameter to describe the underlying dynamic mechanism hidden in gearbox vibration data. Lastly, these vectors are classified by LS-SVM. Moreover, the method of statistical parameters is exploited to classify the multi-fault vibration data which have been investigated by proposed method. The results show that the proposed method is sensitive to multi-fault vibration data of gearbox with similar fault patterns and has a better performance than other methods
