Prognostic Analysis Based on Hybrid Prediction
Method for Axial Piston Pump
Zhaomin He1,2, Shaoping Wang1,2, Kang Wang1,2, Kai Li1,2
1. School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China
2. Science and Technology on Aircraft Control Laboratory, Beijing 100191, China
E-mail: he2811@163.com
Abstract—Health monitoring and prognostics of axial piston
pump is very helpful for the safety of aerial hydraulic system.
Directing to the difficulties of measuring the wear loss between
the valve plate and cylinder barrel, this paper presents a
hybrid prediction method based on EMD (Empirical Mode
Decomposition) and SVM (Support Vector Machine), in which
EMD is used to get the pump’s health state and PSO (Particle
Swarm Optimization)-SVM is used to make a prediction for
the pump’s remaining useful lifetime. Oil-return flow was
selected to indicate the wear condition of pump with several
IMFs. SVM was trained by these IMFs, and then be used to
predict the oil-return flow one-step ahead or multi-step ahead.
In the SVM’s training process, PSO was used to search the
optimal parameter of SVM’s kernel function. Applications
show that hybrid prediction method has higher prediction
precision and could be applied for the remaining useful lifetime
prognostics.
Keywords—failure prognostics, axial piston pump, particle
swarm optimization, support vector machine
I. INTRODUCTION
Now days, technology development has resulted in
increased complexity in both industrial and production
systems. It is difficult for predicting the failure condition
when the failure characteristics are not obvious in the early
and medium period. Thus condition-based maintenance
(CBM) gets more and more attention in engineering
maintenance [1]. An important objective of CBM is to
determine the optimal time for replacement or overhaul of a
machine. The ability to accurately predict the remaining
useful lifetime (RUL) of a machine is critical for its
operation and can also be used to extend production
capability and enhance the system’s reliability.
Numerous models and tools can be used to predict the
machine’s RUL [2]. These prognostic methods can be
classified as being associated with one or more the following
three main groups: data-driven, model-based and knowledge-
based prognostic. The data-driven approaches are based on
statistical and learning techniques, most of which originated
from the theory of pattern recognition and regression [3].
Data-driven methods can be classified into two categories:
statistical approaches and AI approaches. AI approaches
include artificial neural networks, support vector machine
and relevance vector machine [4]. The advantage of data-
driven techniques is their ability to transform high-
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dimensional noisy data into lower dimensional information
for decisions. The main drawback of data-driven approaches
is that their efficiencies are highly dependent on the quantity
and quality of system monitoring data. Model-based
approaches usually employ mathematical models that are
directly tied to physical degradation process [5]. These
approaches are usually developed by domain experts, and the
parameters in the model are validated by large datasets. They
require specific mechanistic knowledge and theories relevant
to the specified systems. With an intelligent monitoring
systems, they work well no matter in steady-state, transient-
state or unanticipated conditions. If the understanding of the
system degradation improves, these methods can be adapted
to increase their accuracy and address subtle performance
problems. The shortcomings of these methods are they
cannot be applied to other types of components, and it is very
hard to build a perfect model. However, the prior experience
also can be used to build another prognostic method i.e.
Knowledge-based prognostic. Two typical examples of
knowledge–based approaches are Expert System and Fuzzy
Logic [6].
Axial piston pump is the main component of hydraulic
power system that supplies the pressurized hydraulic fluid
for the flight control system whose main failure mechanism
is the wear between valve plate and cylinder barrel. As these
two surfaces are covered by outer shell, it’s hard to measure
the wear loss directly. Based on the failure mechanism
analysis, when the wear occurs, the clearance between the
two surfaces becomes larger, which leads to inner leakage
becomes larger. So the oil-return flow can be used to indicate
the wear state of the pump. By analysis the historical data,
we can get the pump’s degradation trend approximately.
Then the remaining useful lifetime can be estimated. In order
to make an accurate prognosis, the oil-return flow data was
decomposed into several IMFs and residual element by EMD
firstly, these IMFs and residual element were trained by
SVM to get each data’s trend, so the prediction of each
dataset can be obtained. The final prediction was acquired by
these sub-predictions. In order to get a more precise
regression model, PSO was used to search the SVM’s
optimal parameter. An actual experiment is implemented to
validate this method’s effectiveness.
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 II. KEY FAILURE MECHANISM ANALYSIS OF AXIAL
PISTON PUMP
In axial piston pump design, the cylinder barrel is
hydrostatically loaded against valve plate as shown in Fig. 1,
in which an appropriate clearance between valve plate and
cylinder barrel is needed to keep seal and lubrication.
The leakage model of valve plate and cylinder barrel is
parallel disk clearance flow under differential pressure. If we
have known the structure and dimension of the valve plate,
we can calculate the leakage flow between cylinder barrel
and valve plate. The piston number is odd to decrease
pressure impulse. The suction and discharge piston number
and the cover angle of piston port are shown in Fig. 3.

α
R1
R2
ϕ 0 ϕ1 ϕ2
R3
R4
α0

Figure 1. The structure of axial piston pump Figure 3. The structure of valve plate

As shown in Fig. 2, the valve plate has two ports: suction
port which linked with oil tank and discharge port which
linked with load. Thus these two ports have different
pressure to against the cylinder barrel. The clearance is a
slant clearance. And there is another question, the pressure
distribution is very complicated and is not a constant caused
by axial piston pump’s operating principle. If the operating
pressure exceeds design limits, the clearance between valve
plate and cylinder barrel will be decreased. Once the
lubricating film is lost, the two surfaces come into contact
and the wear of the sliding surface of the valve plate occurs.
When the wear appears, it not only increases the two
surface’s clearance, but also makes the surfaces become
more and more uneven. The valve plate cannot make a good
contact with cylinder barrel, and the film between two
surfaces isn’t stable, which leads to leakage. So the oil-return
flow is a sensitive parameter that could indicate the wear
state of axial piston pump.
Suction Port Sliding Surface Discharge Port
Figure 2. The Structure of Valve Plate
ϕ0 , ϕ1 , ϕ 2 -the cover angle of discharge port at different
moment, α -the angle between center of two pistons, α 0 -the
angle of piston port, R1 , R2 , R3 , R4 -the radius of inner/outer
seal casing.
Suppose Z is the total number of piston, and when the
number of piston loaded in discharge port is ( Z + 1) / 2 , then
the coverage angle of discharge port can be calculated as
1
follows ϕ1 = ( z − 1)α + α 0 ; when the number of piston
2
loaded in discharge port is ( Z − 1) / 2 , then the coverage
angle of discharge port can be calculated as follows
1
ϕ 2 = ( z − 3)α + α 0 . So the average cover angle is
2
1
expressed as follows ϕ a = ( z − 2)α + α 0 . The leakage flow
2
is a radial flow, which has two directions: from the discharge
port to the outer edge and the center. Because the inner seal
casing and outer seal casing have different dimensions, so
the leakage flow should be calculated respectively. The
leakage flow of outer seal casing is:
ϕ a h3 pb
q1 =
12 μ ln( R1 / R2 ) (1)
The leakage flow of inner seal casing is:
ϕ a h3 pb
q2 =
12μ ln( R3 / R4 ) (2)
and the total leakage is:
q = q1 + q2
(3)
h is the average clearance between valve plate and cylinder
barrel, pb is the pressure at suction/discharge window.

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 From the above analysis, we can conclude the leakage
flow is a sensitive performance of the axial piston pump’s
health state. Thus we can use the leakage flow i.e. oil-return
flow to monitor the wear state of axial piston pump and make
a prediction for the pump’s future performance.
III. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
A. Empirical mode decomposition
EMD method is a signal analysis method which was put
forward by Dr. Huang in NASA [7]. It decomposes the time
series x(t ) into a series of IMF components, and can be used
to decompose any signal theoretically. It has a very distinct
advantage in dealing with non-stationary and non-linear data.
Some researches confirmed that the method can effectively
improve the accuracy of data-mining.
The basic idea of EMD is that any complex signals
consist of some different, simple, non-sine function
component signal. Intrinsic mode function signals need to
meet two conditions: I), The figure of the maximum number
plus the minimum number in the original, minus the number
of the numbers which are equal to zero, the final result is not
more than one; II), the upper envelop-line composed of
maximum value is symmetrical to the lower envelop-line
composed of minimum value in time. There is only one
pattern of volatility in each of the fluctuations in the cycle
between the two zero points in the IMF, which is the basic
decomposition unit in EMD.
The decomposition of one-dimensional signal x(t ) can be
displayed as:
n
x(t ) = ∑ imf i (t ) + rn (t )
i =1 (4)
which imf i (t ) is the intrinsic mode functions, rn (t ) is the
residual element.
The basic processing steps of EMD are as follows:
1) Initialization: r0 = x(t ) and i = 1 ;
2) Extraction of the i IMF signal:
a) Initialization： h0 (t ) = ri (t ) , k = 1
b) Obtaining the maximum point and the minimum point
sequence of hk −1 (t ) ;
c) Obtaining the upper point and the lower envelop line
uk −1 (t ) and vk −1 (t ) of hk −1 (t ) by using cubic spline
interpolation fitting sequence of extreme points of hk −1 (t ) ;
d) Calculating the mean curve of the upper and lower
envelop mk −1 (t ) = (uk −1 (t ) + vk −1 (t )) / 2 ;
e) Calculating hk (t ) = hk −1 (t ) − mk −1 (t ) ;
f) Unless the above calculations meet the iterative
criterion, then IMF1 (t ) = hk (t ) , or else k = k + 1 and go to b)
and going on the iterative calculation.
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3) Calculating the residual signal ri (t ) = ri −1 (t ) − IMFi (t ) ;
4) If the extreme point is more than two, then i = i + 1
and goes to two, or the decomposition ends, and ri (t ) is the
residual element.
The nature of EMD is a smooth signal processing, it
produce a series of smooth signals with different
characteristic scales. After the decomposition process of the
original signal, the first EMF component h1 (k ) includes the
smallest components in the time scale of the original signal,
and with the increases of IMF order, the frequency reduces
gradually. The residual element ri (t ) includes the lowest
frequency component which indicates the trend of the signal.
B. Support vector machine
Support vector machine is a concept in statistic a
computer science for a set of related supervised learning
methods that analyze data and recognize patterns, used for
classification and regression [8]. Unlike most of the
traditional neural network models which implemented the
empirical risk minimization principle, SVM implements the
structural risk minimization principle which leads to the
preferable generalization capability. It can be used to resolve
classification or regression problems. Compared with other
machine learning algorithms, it has some unique advantage
such as, it not only handle the non-linear data very well, but
also can get the global optimum and requires very small
amount of training samples.
In order to make a forecast for the future, considering a
set of time-series data {x (1), x (2),...., x(n)} , we use the
historical data {x (t ), x(t − 1),...., x(t − m + 1)} to predict
x(t + k ) at the future t + k moment, where k is the predict
step length. If k equals to 1, it means we make one-step
forward forecast, otherwise we would make multi-step
forward forecast. And m is the embedding dimension, which
can be chosen according to actual circumstances. In order to
get the most precise prediction as much as possible, there is
something needs to be done such as choose a kernel function
and parameter optimized. There are many kernel functions
for SVM to deal with different circumstances, and RBF
kernel function is the most popular kernel function. When
the kernel function is decided, we should also consider the
parameter optimization which has much influence on the
prediction’s accuracy.
C. Parameter selection of SVM based on PSO
PSO was first introduced by Kennedy and Eberhart [9].
The algorithm is driven by the social behavior of a bird flock
and can be viewed as a population-based stochastic
optimization algorithm. In PSO, the group is a community
composed of individuals called particles. Each particle
adjusts its own “flight path” according to its flying
experience as well as the flying experience of neighboring
particles. Although genetic algorithm has been proposed
earlier than particle swarm optimization, PSO has many
advantages over optimization problem than that of GA,
namely the former without crossover and mutation of
chromosomes is not only programmed easily than the latter
but also converges to global optimal solution promptly. A
PSO method is proposed for optimizing the hyper-
parameters of SVM which is illustrated in Fig. 4.
Start
Initialize the PSO
algorithm constants, g=0
Randomly generate the
Particle population
of parameters of SVM
Training samples Training each individual
SVM
Testing samples Predicting each individual
Calculate the fitness value
Stopping criterion
satisfied?
Yes
As the aero axial piston pump has an extreme high
reliability, and the designed lifetime is too long to measure.
So we take an accelerated life test to cut down the
experiment time. From above analysis, we know the oil-
return flow is a sensitive parameter. With the design
parameter, the allowable leakage flow is 2.8 l/min. Every
five hours, the oil-return flow is recorded. The original data
acquired in the experiment is shown in Fig. 6. From the
picture, we can see the increased trend of the oil-return flow
roughly. At the 238th acquirement, the leakage flow exceeds
the threshold, which means the pump is failure. So the
Generate the new parameters
population of SVM pump’s accelerated test lifetime is 1190 hours. And the
normal lifetime also can be computed by the convert formula
Upgrade velocity and position
between normal test and accelerated test. From the picture,
we can also see the data is not smooth, so EMD is exploited
g=g+1
to improve the prediction precision.
No

Output the optimal

Parameters of SVM(bestc, bestg)

Over

Figure 4. Flow chart of PSO-SVM algorithm

D. Hybrid EMD and SVM

In industry engineering, because of the noise or other
factors, the raw time series data from the sensor is always
nonlinearity and non-stationary, which cannot indicate the
real degradation process of the component. So de-noising
and data smooth technologies are used to preprocess the raw
data. The EMD method is an excellent data smooth Figure 6. Experimental oil-return flow of axial piston pump
technology which is very effective for the non-stationary
data. It decomposes the original data into several IMFs and The EMD results of the original oil-return flow are
residual element. Different IMFs indicate the influence from shown in Fig. 7. It’s decomposed into four IMFs and a
different degradation factor. We use SVM to make a residual element. The frequency of each IMF is decreased
prediction for each IMFs, which can consider each severly. And the residual element is a monotonous curve
degradation factor’s influence on the component much which shows the increased trend explicitly. These IMFs and
clearly. A more accurate total prediction is got from all the residual element can be treated as samples to train the SVM.
sub-predictions. In order to validate the SVR’s accuracy, both the IMFs and
residual elements are devided into train subset and test subset.
IV. EXPERIMENTS RESULTS AND ANALYSIS We use the train subset to train the SVM, and get a
regression predict model, then this model can predict the
In order to validate the hybrid method’s effectiveness, a
future oil-return flow. The model’s effectiveness can be
piston pump’s run-to-failure experiment was implemented on
validated by the compare between the prediction flow and
an axial piston pump PHM platform as show in Fig. 5. This
the test flow.
platform not only used to do failure diagnosis experiment but
also can be used to do failure prognostics experiment. It can
collect and record many type of signals on line, include
pressure, flow, vibration, temperature and differential
pressure.

Axial piston Pump

Oil-return flow
sensor

Figure 5. Experimental platform for axial piston pump Figure 7. The EMD of Oil-return flow

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 In order to improve the precise of the prediction, first we
use EMD to decompose the original data, and there is also
another method which PSO is used to search the optimal
parameter of SVM’s kernal funciton. Cross validation is uesd
to make sure the search process can find the best parameter.
The fitness curve of PSO is shown in Fig. 8. Fig. 9 shows the
prediction comparison between hybrid SVM and traditional
SVM. In the traditional SVM method ， the original data
which are traind directly, and the search method of the
optimal parameter is grid method. Not only is it inefficient,
but also inaccurate. From the MSEs(Mean Square Error)
which indicates the prediction’s accuracy, we can also see
the hybrid SVM is much more accuracy whose MSE is
0.0056 than the traditional SVM whose MSE is 0.0136, 1.5
times bigger than the hybrid SVM.
Figure 8. The fitness curve of PSO optimize
Figure 9. Prediction comparision
V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents a hybrid method that combines the
advantage of EMD, PSO and SVM. EMD is utilized to
smooth the data, and the original data are decomposed into
several IMFs and residual element. These IMFs and residual
element are trained by SVM, and then a SVM model about
the oil-return flow’s growth trend can be obtained. In the
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training process, PSO method is used to search the optimal
parameter. The future oil-return flow would be predicted by
using the trained SVM model. An axial piston pump’s run-
to-failure test proves the method’s effectiveness, and this
method also can be used in other similarity system.
ACKONWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to appreciate the support of
Program 111 of China and Natural Science Foundation
(51175014).
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