Feature Extraction Techniques of Non-Stationary Signals for Fault Diagnosis in Machinery Systems

Previously, fault diagnosis of fixed or steady state mechanical failures (e.g., pumps in nuclear power plant turbines, engines or other key equipment) applied spectrum analysis (e.g., fast Fourier transform, FFT) to extract the frequency features as the basis for identifying the causes of failure types. However, mechanical equipment for increasingly instant speed variations (e.g., wind turbine transmissions or the mechanical arms used in 3C assemblies, etc.) mostly generate non-stationary signals, and the signal features must be averaged with analysis time which makes it difficult to identify the causes of failures. This study proposes a time frequency order spectrum method combining the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and speed frequency order method to capture the order features of non-stationary signals. Such signal features do not change with speed, and are thus effective in identifying faults in mechanical components under non-stationary conditions. In this study, back propagation neural networks (BPNN) and time frequency order spectrum methods were used to verify faults diagnosis and obtained superior diagnosis results in non-stationary signals of gearrotor systems.