Crack Monitoring in Rotating Shaft Using Rotational Speed Sensor-Based Torsional Stiffness Estimation with Adaptive Extended Kalman Filters

In this study, we present an alternative solution for detecting crack damages in rotating shafts under torque fluctuation by directly estimating the reduction in torsional shaft stiffness using the adaptive extended Kalman filter (AEKF) algorithm. A dynamic system model of a rotating shaft for designing AEKF was derived and implemented. An AEKF with a forgetting factor ( ) update was then designed to effectively estimate the time-varying parameter (torsional shaft stiffness) owing to cracks. Both simulation and experimental results demonstrated that the proposed estimation method could not only estimate the decrease in stiffness caused by a crack, but also quantitatively evaluate the fatigue crack growth by directly estimating the shaft torsional stiffness. Another advantage of the proposed approach is that it uses only two cost-effective rotational speed sensors and can be readily implemented in structural health monitoring systems of rotating machinery.