Acoustic Emission, Cylinder Pressure and Vibration: A Multisensor Approach to Robust Fault Diagnosis

Amanda J.C. Sharkey, Gopinath O. Chandroth, Noel E. Sharkey Department of Computer Science, University of She eld, U.K. amanda@dcs.shef.ac.uk When an engine component participating in the combustion process of an internal combustion piston engine, malfunctions, this malfunction may be re ected in the ensuing cylinder pressure traces, acoustic emission and vibration signals. In this paper, we explore the idea of exploiting information detected by pressure, vibration and acoustic emission sensors in order to develop fault diagnostic classi ers. It is shown that, following training on examples of normal operation of a diesel engine and 4 fault conditions, Arti cial Neural Nets based on data from any one of these three sensors can be used to identify the fault condition. In addition a system consisting of an ensemble of three nets, each of which is based on a di erent sensor, can be assembled. The advantages of such a system in terms of protection against sensor failure are discussed.

Abstract:

1 Introduction
A di cult and challenging task for Arti cial Neural Nets (ANNs) is the on-line fault diagnosis of a diesel engine. One way of meeting this challenge is to physically induce faults in a diesel engine, to collect data corresponding to these fault conditions by means of sensors attached to the engine, and to use these data to train ANNs to recognise the fault conditions. In the present study, data corresponding to to both normal and four fault conditions were obtained by physically inducing subtle faults in a diesel engine. These data were acquired by means of three di erent types of sensor: (i) acoustic emission (ii) vibration and (iii) in-cylinder pressure. There are advantages to taking a multisensor approach to a fault diagnosis problem (Luo and Kay, 1992). If combined appropriately, the information that can be obtained from a number of sensors should be more reliable than that obtained from a single sensor. The approach taken here was to train single ANNs on data from individual sensors. These nets were then combined to form ensembles of three nets, each based on data from a di erent sensor, with the aim of creating a system that would prove robust to sensor failure. ANNs have previously been trained by the authors to detect faults on the basis of in-cylinder pressure data from a simulated diesel engine (Sharkey, Sharkey and Chandroth, 1995), and on the basis of both in-cylinder pressure and vibration data from a real diesel engine (Chandroth, Sharkey and Sharkey, 1999a; 1999b). However, the present paper describes new experiments using three types of sensor; the previously investigated in-cylinder pressure and vibration sensors, and an acoustic emission sensor. The addition of an acoustic emission
We would like to thank the EPSRC Grant No.GR/K84257 for funding this research.

sensor is of interest in that it enables an exploration of the extent to which combustionrelated faults can be recognised by arti cial neural nets trained on acoustic emission data. It also enables a comparison of results to those obtained from the other two sensors. And, more signi cantly, the addition of a third sensor makes it possible to construct a system, or ensemble, of three nets that is able to show increased tolerance of sensor failure. There are a growing number of examples of the successful application of ensembles to publicly available data sets (e.g. Tumer and Ghosh, 1999), although few examples of their application to fault diagnosis. However, as discussed elsewhere (Sharkey, 1999), ensembles are usually employed for the purpose of improving performance over that which can be obtained by selecting the best single net. By contrast, in the present case, although some performance improvement might be expected, the emphasis is on the ability of an ensemble to tolerate subsequent sensor failure of one of the three sensors. In summary then, our concern was to train arti cial neural nets on data obtained from a physical diesel engine by means of three di erent sensors. The data corresponds to ve di erent engine conditions; normal operation, and four combustion-related faults. The main aim was to make use of this data to train and construct a combination of nets, or multi-net system (Sharkey, 1999), that would be robust in the face of possible sensor failure. The paper is organised as follows: rst a description is provided of the methods of inducing faults and acquiring data from the diesel engine. This is followed by an account of the training of ANNs using the three types of data, and the combination of these nets to form an ensemble that is robust to the failure of any one of the three sensors.

2 Inducing Faults and Acquiring the data

A 4 stroke, twin cylinder, air cooled, naturally aspirated diesel engine was the subject of all the experiments. It had a maximum power output of 10.4 kW at 3000 revolutions per minute (RPM) with a speed range of 1000 to 3000 RPM. The data acquisition system did not depend on a timebase; instead the crank angular position was used as an external clocking signal to digitise the signals (see Chandroth and Sharkey 1999 for further details). Data was acquired under 5 conditions which included 4 fault states and the normal operating state. Engine speed was varied from 1800 to 2800 RPM during the data collection stage. The faults induced were Leaking exhaust valve (E) (A ne cut across the seat of the valve lid) Leaking air inlet valve (I) (Fault induced as above in air inlet valve) Blocked fuel injector (B) An injector nozzle with 1 out of 4 holes blocked in service Poor fuel atomisation (L) An injector nozzle with imperfect atomisation pattern. Cylinder pressure was sensed with a Kistler 6125A quartz pressure sensor, while engine vibration was sensed with a Bruel & Kjaer Delatron miniature accelerometer with an upper frequency limit of 25 kHz. The vibration signal was band pass ltered from 20 Hz to 18 kHz using an analogue lter. The acoustic emission was sensed by means of a wide band sensor with an operational frequency range of 100 to 1000 kHz and peak reference sensitivity of

55 V/m/s mounted on unit no.1 cylinder head. The output of the sensor was ampli ed by a preampli er with a gain of 40 DB and an band pass lter of 100 kHz to 1024 kHz. The faults induced in the engine are all combustion-related. As such they would be expected to a ect the in-cylinder pressure, which in turn would a ect the vibration patter of the engine. Changes in in-cylinder pressure would in turn a ect the vibration signal. Previous work has shown that engine faults can be diagnosed on the basis of both pressure and vibration data (Chandroth et all 1999b), although vibration measures are more common. The use of an acoustic emission sensor was more unusual. Acoustic emission, or stress wave emission has been predominantly used in the detection of microscopic changes in material where the atomic rearrangement within a material during deformation and cracking produce elastic waaves. However, work on railway signalling equipment (Fararooy and Allen, 1995) in monitoring rate of compressed air leakage from dange signal arm control equipment implies any gas pressure leak would result in a high frequency hissing noise, to which the acoustic emission signal would be sensitive.

3 Training
Under each of the ve conditions listed above, (four fault conditions, and one corresponding to normal operation), 2400 samples of data representing cylinder pressure, vibration and acoustic emission were acquired; resulting in three sets of 12000 samples for each sensor. Each data set was itself divided into three further sets; 7500 to be used for training ANNs, 1500 for validating, and 3000 for nal testing. The training of ANNs is described below.

3.1 Pressure
Each of the 7500 examples to be used for training originally consisted of 7200 points, corresponding to 720 degrees of a 4-stroke cycle. Based on domain knowledge, points were selected that corresponded to the area of combustion (in the range 1801-2000). Two versions of the input were created, one which consisted of 200 points, and one which contained 50 input points (every fourth being selected). These samples were standardised, and used to train ve arti cial neural nets. The generalisation results, obtained when each net was tested on the validation set, are shown in Table 1. Net No. of inputs No. of hidden units Generalisation Pressure1 200 50 90.1% Pressure2 50 25 88.9% Pressure3 50 40 87.8% Pressure4 50 30 88.6% Pressure5 50 35 87.87% Table 1: Generalisation performance of nets trained on pressure data

3.2 Vibration
The vibration data was preprocessed by means of the wavelet transform. The 7200 points that originally made up each example, were reduced to 1800 by selecting points in the combustion region. These points were then decomposed to ve levels by using the Daubechies orthogonal wavelet transform. The decomposition process consists of convolving the analysed signal with low and high pass lters made up of Daubechies lter coe cients. At each level of decomposition, data for training ANNs was assembled by computing the variance of the wavelet coe cients, and selecting points of maximum variance. At levels 1, 2 and 3 of the wavelet decomposition, 40 wavelet coe cients were selected to form the input for each example used to train an ANN. At level 4, 30 were selected, and at level 5, 15 were selected. The generalisation results obtained when each net was tested on the validation set are shown below. Net No. of inputs No. of hidden units Generalisation Vibration1 40 20 94.07% Vibration2 40 20 90.00% Vibration3 40 20 93.73% Vibration4 30 15 95.73% Vibration5 15 10 97.40% Table 2: Generalisation performance of nets trained on vibration data

3.3 Acoustic Emission

The acoustic emission data was preprocessed by computing the power spectral density of the signal, using 128 points from the signal each time. This resulted in 65 power spectral sensity estimates, from which 34 were selected and used for training. Each example used for training consisted therefore of 34 input points. Again, ve nets were trained; their generalisation results are shown below. Net No. of inputs No. of hidden units Generalisation AE1 34 10 98.30% AE2 34 15 97.80% AE3 34 20 98.0% AE4 34 25 97.40% AE5 34 30 97.20% Table 3: Generalisation performance of nets trained on acoustic emission data

4 Combining Results
Inspection of Tables 1, 2 and 3, show that adequate results (> 80%) were obtained for nets trained on each of the three types of sensor. These results show that it is possible

for combustion-related faults to be detected by means of data obtained from an acoustic emission sensor. In fact, of the three sensors, the best result was obtained from a net trained on acoustic emission data (98.3%). Interestingly, the average generalisation performance of nets trained on pressure data was lower (88.65%) than that obtained from nets based either on vibration data (94%), or acoustic emission data (97.74%). An important aim of this study was to combine nets trained on data from di erent sensors so as to obtain a system resistant to problems of sensor failure. Accordingly, ensembles of nets were formed by trying all 125 combinations of three nets, one from each sensor. For each input, the output of the ensemble was created by taking a majority vote over the three nets. One of the combinations y resulting in the best generalisation performance (when tested on the validation set) is shown below; the result (99.47%) is slightly better than the result obtained by combining the best net from each sensor (99.27%). The best performing ensemble was selected on the basis of its performance on the validation set, and when tested on the nal test set achieved a generalisation levels of 99.03%. It can be seen in Table 4 that combining three nets resulted in better performance than that of the best single net (98.30%). This result is in agreement with previously reported investigations, showing the advantages of ensemble usage. In addition, it was possible to see how well the ensemble would fare if any one of the sensors were to fail. Failure of a sensor was simulated by assuming that the output for that member of the ensemble was zero on each occasion (although the same result would be obtained if the output were consistently wrong). Taking the consitutents of the ensemble listed in table ?, the ensemble performance if the acoustic emisssion sensor were to be consistently faulty was 85.20%. If the vibration sensor, or accelerometer, were to fail, the ensemble performance would have beeen 86.00%, whilst if the pressure sensor were to fail, the output would be 95.83%. (See Table 5). It is apparent that, although reduced, the ensemble performance in the presence of simulated sensor failure is still reasonable. This serves to illustrate the bene ts of combining nets trained on data from di erent sensors; not only can the combination improve upon the best performance of any single net, but the majority vote on which it is based enables the system to be tolerant of sensor failure. Net1 Perf Net2 Perf Net3 Perf Ensemble AE1 98.3% Vibration5 97.40% Pressure2 88.90% 99.47% Table 4: Best performing ensemble Pressure sensor Vibration sensor Acoustic Emission sensor Generalisation Normal Normal Faulty 85.20% Normal Faulty Normal 86.00% Faulty Normal Normal 95.83% Table 5: Performance of ensemble with faulty sensor
y Two other combinations resulted in the same generalisation performance; one of the three was randomly selected.

5 Conclusions
The main aim of the paper has been achieved, in that the results reported here show that it was possible to construct an ensemble of three nets, each based on data from a di erent sensor, that is tolerant of sensor failure. When sensor faults were simulated by assuming each of the sensors in turn to have ceased to produce meaningful data, the ensemble performance, although reduced, was still at a reasonable level. These results can be contrasted to the complete failure of generalisation performance that would have occured in a single net, if the sensor responsible for its input were to fail. In addition, it can be noted that the best performing ensemble slightly outperformed the best single net (the small size of the improvement re ecting the already high degree of accuracy of the nets). As such the research reported here illustrates an additional advantage that can result from the use of ensembles; namely tolerance of sensor failure, as well as performance improvement. The present results also provide con rmatory evidence for the claim that acoustic emission data can provide a useful part of a fault diagnosis system.

6 References
Chandroth, G and Sharkey, A.J.C. (1999) Utilising the rotational motion of machinery in a high resolution data acquisition system. In Proceedings of Computers and Ships, Organised by The Institute of Marine Engineers in association with The Royal Institution of Naval Architects. Chandroth, G.O, Sharkey, A.J.C. and Sharkey, N.E. (1999a) Vibration signatures, wavelets and principal components. In Proceedings of 'Marine Technology ODRA 99', 11-13 October, Poland. Chandroth,G.O., Sharkey, A.J.C. and Sharkey, N.E. (1999b) Cylinder pressures and vibration in internal combustion engine condition monitoring. To appear in Proceedings 'Comadem 99', Sunderland, UK, July, 1999 Fararooy, S., and Allan, J. (1995) Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of railway signalling mechanical equipment using acoustic emission sensors, Insight, 4, 294-297. Luo, R.C. and Kay, M.G. (1992) Data Fusion and Sensor Integration: State-of-the-Art 1990s. In (Eds) M.A.Abidi and R.C.Gonzalez, Data Fusion in Robotics and Machine Intelligence, Academic Press. Sharkey, A.J.C. (1999) Multi-Net Systems. In (Ed) A.J.C. Sharkey Combining Arti cial Neural Nets: Ensemble and Modular Multi-Net Systems, Springer-Verlag, pp 1-30. Sharkey, A.J.C., Sharkey, N.E. and Chandroth, G.O. (1996) Diverse Neural Net solutions to a Fault Diagnosis Problem . Neural Computing and Applications, 4, 218-227. Tumer, K., and Ghosh, J. (1999) Linear order statistics combiners for pattern classi cation. In (Ed) A.J.C. Sharkey Combining Arti cial Neural Nets: Ensemble and Modular Multi-Net Systems, Springer-Verlag, pp 127-161.