Novel Approach to Rotating Machinery Diagnostics Based on Principal Component and Residual Matrix Analysis

Rotating machinery such as induction motors and gears driven by shafts are widely used in industry. A variety of techniques have been employed over the past several decades for fault detection and identification in such machinery. However, there is no universally accepted set of practices with comprehensive diagnostic capabilities. This paper presents a new and sensitive approach, to detect faults in rotating machines; based on principal component techniques and residual matrix analysis (PCRMA) of the vibration measured signals. The residual matrix for machinery vibration is extracted using the PCA method, crest factors of this residual matrix is determined and then machinery condition is assessed based on comparing the crest factor amplitude with the base line (healthy) level. PCRMA method has been applied to vibration data sets collected from several kinds of rotating machinery: a wind turbine, a gearbox, and an induction motor. This approach successfully differentiated the signals from healthy system and systems containing gear tooth breakage, cracks in a turbine blade, and phase imbalance in induction motor currents. The achieved results show that the developed method is found very promising and Crest Factors levels were found very sensitive for machinery condition.