Early Fault Diagnosis for Planetary Gearbox Based Wavelet Packet Energy and Modulation Signal Bispectrum Analysis

Gearbox Fault Identification Model Using an Adaptive Noise Canceling Technique, Heterogeneous Feature Extraction, and Distance Ratio Principal Component Analysis

Using an adaptive noise canceling technique (ANCT) and distance ratio principal component analysis (DRPCA), this paper proposes a new fault diagnostic model for multi-degree tooth-cut failures (MTCF) in a gearbox operating at inconsistent speeds. To account for background and disturbance noise in the vibration characteristics of gear failures, the proposed approach employs ANCT in the first stage to optimize vibration signals. The ANCT applies an adaptive denoising technique to each basic frequency segment in the whole frequency response of vibrations. Following that, a novel DRPCA is used to extract the discriminating low-dimensional features. The DRPCA initially determines each feature's relative proximity to fault categories by computing the average Euclidian distance ratio between similar and dissimilar classes. The most discriminatory features with the lowest dimensions are selected, as determined by principal component analysis (PCA). The new DRPCA is created by combining distance ratio-based feature inspection with PCA. The optimal feature set containing the most discriminative features is then fed to the support vector machine classifier to identify multiple failure categories. The experimental results indicate that the proposed model outperforms the state-of-art approaches and offers the highest identification accuracy.

Decision Tree-Based Classification for Planetary Gearboxes' Condition Monitoring with the Use of Vibration Data in Multidimensional Symptom Space

Monitoring the condition of rotating machinery, especially planetary gearboxes, is a challenging problem. In most of the available approaches, diagnostic procedures are related to advanced signal pre-processing/feature extraction methods or advanced data (features) analysis by using artificial intelligence. In this paper, the second approach is explored, so an application of decision trees for the classification of spectral-based 15D vectors of diagnostic data is proposed. The novelty of this paper is that by a combination of spectral analysis and the application of decision trees to a set of spectral features, we are able to take advantage of the multidimensionality of diagnostic data and classify/recognize the gearbox condition almost faultlessly even in non-stationary operating conditions. The diagnostics of time-varying systems are a complicated issue due to time-varying probability densities estimated for features. Using multidimensional data instead of an aggregated 1D feature, it is possible to improve the efficiency of diagnostics. It can be underlined that in comparison to previous work related to the same data, where the aggregated 1D variable was used, the efficiency of the proposed approach is around 99% (ca. 19% better). We tested several algorithms: classification and regression trees with the Gini index and entropy, as well as the random tree. We compare the obtained results with the K-nearest neighbors classification algorithm and meta-classifiers, namely: random forest and AdaBoost. As a result, we created the decision tree model with 99.74% classification accuracy on the test dataset.

Novel Higher-Order Spectral Cross-Correlation Technologies for Vibration Sensor-Based Diagnosis of Gearboxes

Novel vibration sensor-based diagnostic technologies, built on the higher order wavelet spectral cross-correlation (WSC), are proposed, investigated and applied to gearbox vibration diagnosis for the first time in worldwide terms. The proposed WSC-based technologies do not feature any constrains in selection of signal spectral components, relations between which are analysed. That is a radical improvement in comparison with the higher-order spectra (HOS). The WSC technologies are applied for an experimental diagnosis of a local gear tooth fault of a helical gearbox that is developed during a long duration gearbox endurance test. Differences between the applied technologies and advantages of the novel WSC approach over the classical HOS are explained in detail. Superiority of the WSC technologies is justified by high validity comprehensive experimental comparison with the HOS technologies: i.e., the wavelet bicoherence and the wavelet tricoherence.

Higher-Order Spectra Analysis-Based Diagnosis Method of Blades Biofouling in a PMSG Driven Tidal Stream Turbine

Most electrical machines and drive signals are non-Gaussian and are highly nonlinear in nature. A useful set of techniques to examine such signals relies on higher-order statistics (HOS) spectral representations. They describe statistical dependencies of frequency components that are neglected by traditional spectral measures, namely the power spectrum (PS). One of the most used HOS is the bispectrum where examining higher-order correlations should provide further details and information about the conditions of electric machines and drives. In this context, the stator currents of electric machines are of particular interest because they are periodic, nonlinear, and cyclostationary. This current is, therefore, well adapted for analysis using bispectrum in the designing of an efficient condition monitoring method for electric machines and drives. This paper is, therefore, proposing a bispectrum-based diagnosis method dealing the with tidal stream turbine (TST) rotor blades biofouling issue, which is a marine environment natural process responsible for turbine rotor unbalance. The proposed bispectrum-based diagnosis method is verified using experimental data provided from a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG)-based TST experiencing biofouling emulated by attachment on the turbine blade. Based on the achieved results, it can be concluded that the proposed diagnosis method has been very successful. Indeed, biofouling imbalance-related frequencies are clearly identified despite marine environmental nuisances (turbulences and waves).

Fault detection for planetary gearbox based on an enhanced average filter and modulation signal bispectrum analysis

Transient impulses are important information for machinery fault diagnosis. However, the transient features contained in the vibration signals generated by planetary gearboxes are usually immersed by a large amount of background noise and harmonic components. Even mathematical morphology (MM) is an excellent anti-noise signal processing method that can directly extract the geometry of impulse features in the time domain, but the four basic operators of MM can only extract one-way impulses while cannot extract the bidirectional impulses effectively at the same time. To accurately extract the impulse feature information, a novel method for fault detection of planetary gearbox based on an enhanced average (EAVG) filter and modulated signal bispectrum (MSB) is proposed. Firstly, the properties of the extracted impulses based on the four basic operators of MM will be divided into two categories of enhanced average operators. The four EAVG filters consist of the average weighted combination of enhanced average operators, and then the best EAVG filter is selected based on correlation coefficient to implement on the original vibration signal. It allows EAVG filter to extract positive and negative impulses of vibration signal, thereby improving the accuracy of planetary gearbox fault detection. Subsequently, the performance of the EAVG filter is influenced by the length of its structural element (SE), which is adaptively determined using an indicator based kurtosis. Then, the EAVG filter selects the optimal SE length to eliminate the interference of background noise and harmonic components to enhance the impulse components of the vibration signal. However, the nonlinear modulation components that are related to the fault types and severities are not extracted exactly and still remained in the filtered signal by EAVG. Finally, the MSB is utilized to the EAVG filtered signal to decompose the modulated components and extract the fault features. The advantages of EAVG over average (AVG) filter are clarified in the simulation study. In addition, the EAVG-MSB is validated by analyzing the vibration signals of planetary gearboxes with sun gear chipped tooth, sun gear misalignment and bearing inner race fault. The results indicate that the EAVG-MSB is effective and accurate in feature extraction compared with the combination morphological filter-hat transform (CMFH) and average combination difference morphological filter (ACDIF), and the feasibility of the EAVG-MSB are proved for planetary gearbox condition monitoring and fault diagnosis.

Fault Diagnosis of Planetary Gearbox Based on Adaptive Order Bispectrum Slice and Fault Characteristics Energy Ratio Analysis

The vibration of a planetary gearbox (PG) is complex and mutually modulated, which makes the weak features of incipient fault difficult to detect. To target this problem, a novel method, based on an adaptive order bispectrum slice (AOBS) and the fault characteristics energy ratio (FCER), is proposed. The order bispectrum (OB) method has shown its effectiveness in the feature extraction of bearings and fixed-shaft gearboxes. However, the effectiveness of the PG still needs to be explored. The FCER is developed to sum up the fault information, which is scattered by mutual modulation. In this method, the raw vibration signal is firstly converted to that in the angle domain. Secondly, the characteristic slice of AOBS is extracted. Different from the conventional OB method, the AOBS is extracted by searching for a characteristic carrier frequency adaptively in the sensitive range of signal coupling. Finally, the FCER is summed up and calculated from the fault features that were dispersed in the characteristic slice. Experimental data was processed, using both the AOBS-FCER method, and the method that combines order spectrum analysis with sideband energy ratio (OSA-SER), respectively. Results indicated that the new method is effective in incipient fault feature extraction, compared with the methods of OB and OSA-SER.

A Diagnosis Method for the Compound Fault of Gearboxes Based on Multi-Feature and BP-AdaBoost

Gearbox is an important structure of rotating machinery, and the accurate fault diagnosis of gearboxes is of great significance for ensuring efficient and safe operation of rotating machinery. Aiming at the problem that there is little common compound fault data of gearboxes, and there is a lack of an effective diagnosis method, a gearbox fault simulation experiment platform is set up, and a diagnosis method for the compound fault of gearboxes based on multi-feature and BP-AdaBoost is proposed. Firstly, the vibration signals of six typical states of gearbox are obtained, and the original signals are decomposed by empirical mode decomposition and reconstruct the new signal to achieve the purpose of noise reduction. Then, perform the time domain analysis and wavelet packet analysis on the reconstructed signal, extract three time domain feature parameters with higher sensitivity, and combine them with eight frequency band energy feature parameters obtained by wavelet packet decomposition to form the gearbox state feature vector. Finally, AdaBoost algorithm and BP neural network are used to build the BP-AdaBoost strong classifier model, and feature vectors are input into the model for training and verification. The results show that the proposed method can effectively identify the gearbox failure modes, and has higher accuracy than the traditional fault diagnosis methods, and has certain reference significance and engineering application value.

Fault Diagnosis of Rotary Parts of a Heavy-Duty Horizontal Lathe Based on Wavelet Packet Transform and Support Vector Machine

The spindle box is responsible for power transmission, supporting the rotating parts and ensuring the rotary accuracy of the workpiece in the heavy-duty machine tool. Its assembly quality is crucial to ensure the reliable power supply and stable operation of the machine tool in the process of large load and cutting force. Therefore, accurate diagnosis of assembly faults is of great significance for improving assembly efficiency and ensuring outgoing quality. In this paper, the common fault types and characteristics of the spindle box of heavy horizontal lathe are analyzed first, and original vibration signals of various fault types are collected. The wavelet packet is used to decompose the signal into different frequency bands and reconstruct the nodes in the frequency band where the characteristic frequency points are located. Then, the power spectrum analysis is carried out on the reconstructed signal, so that the fault features in the signal can be clearly expressed. The structure of the feature vector used for fault diagnosis is analyzed and the feature vector is extracted from the collected signals. Finally, the intelligent pattern recognition method based on support vector machine is used to classify the fault types. The results show that the method proposed in this paper can quickly and accurately judge the fault types.

A Novel Fault Detection Method for Rolling Bearings Based on Non-Stationary Vibration Signature Analysis

To realize the accurate fault detection of rolling element bearings, a novel fault detection method based on non-stationary vibration signal analysis using weighted average ensemble empirical mode decomposition (WAEEMD) and modulation signal bispectrum (MSB) is proposed in this paper. Bispectrum is a third-order statistic, which can not only effectively suppress Gaussian noise, but also help identify phase coupling. However, it cannot effectively decompose the modulation components which are inherent in vibration signals. To alleviate this issue, MSB based on the modulation characteristics of the signals is developed for demodulation and noise reduction. Still, the direct application of MSB has some interfering frequency components when extracting fault features from non-stationary signals. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is an advanced nonlinear and non-stationary signal processing approach that can decompose the signal into a list of stationary intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). The proposed method takes advantage of WAEEMD and MSB for bearing fault diagnosis based on vibration signature analysis. Firstly, the vibration signal is decomposed into IMFs with a different frequency band using EEMD. Then, the IMFs are reconstructed into a new signal by the weighted average method, called WAEEMD, based on Teager energy kurtosis (TEK). Finally, MSB is applied to decompose the modulated components in the reconstructed signal and extract the fault characteristic frequencies for fault detection. Furthermore, the efficiency and performance of the proposed WAEEMD-MSB approach is demonstrated on the fault diagnosis for a motor bearing outer race fault and a gearbox bearing inner race fault. The experimental results verify that the WAEEMD-MSB has superior performance over conventional MSB and EEMD-MSB in extracting fault features and has precise and effective advantages for rolling element bearing fault detection.

Gearbox Fault Diagnosis Based on Hierarchical Instantaneous Energy Density Dispersion Entropy and Dynamic Time Warping

The accurate fault diagnosis of gearboxes is of great significance for ensuring safe and efficient operation of rotating machinery. This paper develops a novel fault diagnosis method based on hierarchical instantaneous energy density dispersion entropy (HIEDDE) and dynamic time warping (DTW). Specifically, the instantaneous energy density (IED) analysis based on singular spectrum decomposition (SSD) and Hilbert transform (HT) is first applied to the vibration signal of gearbox to acquire the IED signal, which is designed to reinforce the fault feature of the signal. Then, the hierarchical dispersion entropy (HDE) algorithm developed in this paper is used to quantify the complexity of the IED signal to obtain the HIEDDE as fault features. Finally, the DTW algorithm is employed to recognize the fault types automatically. The validity of the two parts that make up the HIEDDE algorithm, i.e., the IED analysis for fault features enhancement and the HDE algorithm for quantifying the information of signals, is numerically verified. The proposed method recognizes the fault patterns of the experimental data of gearbox accurately and exhibits advantages over the existing methods such as multi-scale dispersion entropy (MDE) and refined composite MDE (RCMDE).

Motion Periods of Planet Gear Fault Meshing Behavior

Vibration sensors are, generally, fixed on the housing of planetary gearboxes for vibration monitoring. When a local fault occurred on the tooth of a planet gear, along with the system operating, the faulty tooth will mesh with the ring gear or sun gear at different positions referring to the fixed sensor. With consideration of the attenuation effect, the amplitudes of the fault-induced vibrations will be time-varying due to the time-varying transfer paths. These variations in signals are valuable information to identify the fault existence as well as the severity and types. However, the fault-meshing positions are time-varying and elusive due to the complicated kinematics or the compound motion behaviors of the internal rotating components. It is tough to accurately determine every fault meshing position though acquiring information from multi-sensors. However, there should exist some specific patterns of the fault meshing positions referring to the single sensor. To thoroughly investigate these motion patterns make effective fault diagnosis feasible merely by a single sensor. Unfortunately, so far few pieces of literature explicitly demonstrate these motion patterns in this regard. This article proposes a method to derive the motion periods of the fault-meshing positions with a faulty planet gear tooth, in which two conditions are considered: 1. The fault-meshing position initially occurs at the ring gear; 2. The fault-meshing position initially occurs at the sun gear. For each scenario, we derive the mathematical expression of the motion period in terms of rotational angles. These motion periods are, in essence, based on the teeth number of gears of a given planetary gearbox. Finally, the application of these motion periods for fault diagnosis is explored with experimental studies. The minimal required data length of a single sensor for effective fault diagnosis is revealed based on the motion periods.