Estimation of unbalance parameters using finite element method and joint

input-state estimation technique

A. Shrivastava, A. R. Mohanty
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur 721302,
India

Abstract
In this paper, a model-based method for the estimation of unbalance parameters in a rotor-bearing
system is proposed. The identification of unbalance force is followed by the estimation of unbalance
amplitude and phase. A joint input-state estimation technique is used for the estimation of unbalance
force. Least-square technique is employed to estimate amplitude and phase of rotating unbalance.
Numerical examples are presented for three different cases of single and two-disk systems where finite
element method is used for the modeling of the rotor system. Unbalance parameters are identified
successfully in all the cases. Results are presented for different shaft speeds and measurement noise
levels, and it is found that the proposed technique can estimate fault parameters accurately.

Keywords: Model-based method; disk unbalance; Kalman filter

1. Introduction:

Unbalance is a common rotating machinery fault [1]. Signal processing based fault identification
techniques are common practice to detect and classify machinery faults [2, 3]. However, signal-
based fault diagnosis techniques focus only on qualitative analysis of machine’s condition.
For the quantitative analysis of machinery faults, i.e., to estimate fault parameters like
severity and location, model-based approaches have been developed where the mathematical
model of the system and measured responses are used for fault diagnosis. In [4, 5], one such
technique is presented where the calculated residual forces are compared with the theoretical
forces due to faults to detect and locate the machine’s fault. It has been pointed out that the
identification results depend on the accuracy of the undamaged system model and number of
response measurements [4].
Meanwhile, some deterministic-stochastic techniques are proposed in the field of rotor-
dynamics for various purposes such as parameter identification using extended Kalman filter [6],
fault identification using Kalman filter [7], etc. These techniques incorporate modeling as
well as measurement errors in system model for state estimation. However, the excitation
in the system, e.g., the force due to unbalance is assumed to be known which may not be
true for real machines.
Recently, the authors of the present paper have proposed the techniques for unbalance
identification [8] and strain estimation [9] in rotating shaft based on joint input-state estimation
(JIS) technique [10]. The JIS technique was used for unbalance force identification, and amount
of unbalance present in a single-disk rotor system was calculated using force spectrum. The JIS
technique is proposed by Gillijns and De Moor [10], and it has been successfully applied in
structural dynamics for unknown force estimation [11].
 The main aim of the present work is to identify unbalance parameters (amplitude and
phase) of single and multi-disk systems. The finite element method is used for mathematical
modeling of the system. The JIS technique is used to identify unbalance forces which are
compared with the fault model to obtain unbalance parameters using the least square technique.
The proposed technique is verified by numerical simulations of single and two-disk system
rotating at different speeds. The normalized mean square error (NMSE) between exact and
estimated forces is presented to verify the proposed technique.

2. Formulation

2.1 State-space modeling

The JIS technique uses state-space modeling of the system. The equation of motion of a linear
dynamic system is given by,

Mz (t)  Cz(t)  Kz(t)  Sf f(t) (1)

where M, C, and K are mass, damping, and stiffness matrices, respectively. Boolean matrix Sf is
the force selection matrix, and f(t) is the unbalance force vector. The nodal displacement,
velocity, and accelerations are represented by z (t) , z (t) and z (t) , respectively.
Assuming the state vector consists of displacements and velocities, i.e. x(t )   z z , the
T

continuous time state-space representation of Eq. (1) can be given as

x(t)=A c x(t)+Bcf (t)

(2)
y(t)=G c x(t)+J cf (t)

where A c is the state matrix, Bc is the input influence matrix, G c is the output matrix and J c is
the feed-through matrix, these matrices are defined as,

 I 0   0 
 0 I   0  
Ac   -1 -1 
, Bc   -1  , Gc   0 I  , J c   0 
-M K -M C   M Sf  -M -1K -M -1C   M -1Sf 

The output vector y(t) consists of displacements, velocities, and accelerations. Because
measured responses are always in discrete time, the continuous time model (Eq. (2)) needs to be
converted into equivalent discrete time, which can be described as

xk 1 =Axk +Bf k
(3)
y k =Gxk +Jf k

where k represents time-index. Matrices A, B, G and J are the discrete time equivalent of
matrices A c , Bc , G c and J c , respectively.
2.2 Joint input-state estimation technique

The linear dynamic system with modeling and measurement errors can be described by
following set of equations,

xk 1 =Axk +Bf k  wk
(4)
y k =Gxk +Jf k  vk

where wk and vk are the random Gaussian noise vectors correspond to process and measurement
noise with known covariance Q and R , respectively.
The JIS estimation process is a three-step filter for unknown input and state estimation, as
presented in Table 1.
Table 1. The joint input-state estimation technique [10].

Initialization
Initial state x 0  Ε [ x0 ]
Error covariance of P0 x  Ε [( x  x 0 )T ]
Initial state
Estimation of unknown input
R k  GPkx/ k 1G T  R
1 1
M k  (J T R k J) 1 J T R k

Input estimates f k  M k (y k  G x k / k 1 )
1
Variance of input Pkf  (J T R k J) 1
estimates
Measurement update
1
Gain matrix K k  Pkx/ k 1G T R k
State estimates x k / k  x k / k 1  K k (y k  G x k / k 1  Jf k )
Variance of state Pkx  Pkx/ k 1  K k (R k  J Pkf J T )K Tk
estimates
Pkxf  (Pkfx )T  K k JPkf
Time update
x k 1/ k  A x k / k  Bf k
P x Pkxf   A T 
x k 1/ k  [A B]  kf/xk  Q
 Pk Pkf   BT 
3. Numerical Example:

In this section, numerical examples are presented for single and two-disk rotor system as shown
in Figure 1 and Figure 3, respectively. The parameters of the rotor systems are presented in Table
2. In both the systems, the rotor is supported at ends by two identical bearings. In finite element
modeling, Euler-Bernoulli beam element is used.

Table 2. Different parameters of the rotor system.

Shaft Length – 362 mm, diameter – 16 mm,

Young’s modulus – 2 ×109 N/m2 , density – 7800 kg/m3

Disk Mass – 782 g, thickness – 16 mm, diameter – 152.4 mm

Bearing Stiffness – 2.57×107 N/m, damping – 250 Ns/m

The unbalance force in x and y directions can be represented by,

Fx  meω2 cos(ωt  φ)
(5)
Fy  meω2 sin(ωt  φ)

where me is the amount of unbalance (unbalance mass times eccentricity), ω is the shaft’s
rotating speed, and φ is the phase angle of the unbalance mass.
The least square algorithm is used to achieve the best fit between estimated unbalance
forces f k obtained from JIS technique and theoretical model forces given in Eq. (5). The
objective function can be expressed by,
min
β i
 (F(β, t i )-f(t
ˆ )) 2
i (6)

The vector β contains fault parameters, i.e., me and φ .

In numerical simulations following steps are followed:

1. Response sequences y k are obtained by solving Eq. (4) for known unbalance force. The
process noise is assumed to be zero because the same model is used in response generation
and input estimation. The measurement noise for i th measurement is defined as, vki   i r ,
where  is the noise level,  i is the standard deviation of the i th response without noise,
and r is the random sequence with zero mean and unit standard deviation.
2. Unbalance force estimates ( f k ) are obtained using JIS algorithm, presented in Table 1.
Following filter parameters are set: null initial states and covariance, process noise
 covariance, Q=1020  I where I is the unity matrix with appropriate dimension,
measurement noise covariance matrix can be calculated as, R ii =( i )2 .
3. Unbalance parameters, i.e., amplitude (me) and phase φ are obtained by least-square
method (Eq. (6)).

It is noted here that, the location of unbalance forces are known (at disk locations),
therefore, the force location matrix Sf can be easily obtained. In the present work, full order
model of the system is considered for response generation as well as for force estimation. In a
practical situation where limited measurements are available, reduced order model can be used
for unbalance force estimation.

The three cases that are presented next are as follows:

(a) A single-disk system with disk unbalance of 3.5×10-4 kg-m at 0º.

(b) A two-disk system with unbalance (3.5×10-4 kg-m at 0º) at disk 1 only.
(c) A two-disk system with following unbalance conditions: 3.5×10-4 kg-m at 0º at disk 1 and
4×10-4 kg-m at 10º at disk 2.

3.1. Case (a)

90° y Disk

180° 0°
x
Shaft z

Bearing 1 Bearing 2
270°
Nodes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Figure 1. A single-disk rotor system.

Accurate estimation of fault parameters (amplitude and phase of unbalance in the present case)
depends upon the estimated unbalance force. In Figure 2, exact and estimated force is shown for
shaft speed of 50 Hz and 5% measurement noise level. It can be observed that the estimated
unbalance force follows well the exact force. Similar results are obtained for other speeds and
therefore are not presented herein. The maximum percentage error found in unbalance amplitude
is less than 0.06% and absolute difference found in phase is 0.026º.
 Figure 2. Actual and estimated unbalance force at disk 1 of single-disk system for the
shaft speed of 50 Hz and 5% measurement noise level.

3.2. Case (b)

90°
y Disk 1 Disk 2

180° 0° x z
Bearing Bearing
1 2
270° Nodes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Figure 3. A two-disk rotor system.

The estimated unbalance force matches well with the exact unbalance force at disk 1. However,
at disk 2, inaccurate forces with very low amplitudes are estimated, as shown in Figure 4. The
estimated force at disk 2 is random in nature because of the measurement noise. As can be seen
its amplitude increases with measurement noise level.
Figure 4. Actual and estimated unbalance force at disk 2 of two-disk system for the shaft
speed of 50 Hz. (γ represents measurement noise level).

3.3. Case (c)

In case (c), unbalance parameters are identified in a two-disk system where amplitude and phase
of unbalance are different in both the disks. It can be easily observed from Table 3 that the
estimated unbalance forces are quite accurate. In this case, the calculated maximum percentage
error in the amount of unbalance is 0.063%, and the absolute difference in unbalance phase is
0.05º which shows an accurate estimation of unbalance parameters.

Table 3. The percentage normalized mean square error of estimated unbalance force.

Shaft
speed (Hz)
Case Noise 10 20 30 40 50
level (%)
1 0.07 0.08 0.1 0.1 0.13
a 5 0.35 0.39 0.47 0.58 0.66
10 0.69 0.77 0.94 1.08 1.36

1 0.07 0.08 0.1 0.11 0.13

b (at Disk 1) 5 0.35 0.45 0.47 0.57 0.68
10 0.78 0.81 0.93 1.1 1.36

1 0.08 0.09 0.11 0.14 0.16

c (at Disk 1) 5 0.38 0.45 0.55 0.7 0.84
10 0.78 0.92 1.11 1.31 1.6
4. Conclusions

In this paper, finite element method and joint input-state (JIS) estimation technique based force
identification approach are used for unbalance parameters (amplitude and phase) estimation. Full
order finite element model is used in numerical simulations where three different cases are
presented for the single and two-disk systems. Results show that for different measurement noise
levels accurate unbalance parameters can be identified using present approach.

In real rotor systems, measurements are available at limited locations only, therefore, the full
order model cannot be implemented. However, use of reduced order models for unbalance force
identification can overcome this problem.

References

1. Mohanty A.R., Machinery Condition Monitoring: Principles and Practices, CRC Press (2014).

2. Fatima, S., Mohanty, A. R., and Kazmi, H. F.. Fault Classification and Detection in a Rotor Bearing
Rig. Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies, 4(6), 491-498, (2016).

3. Fatima, S., Mohanty, A. R., and Naikan, V. N. A., Multiple Fault Classification Using Support
Vector Machine in a Machinery Fault Simulator. In Vibration Engineering and Technology of
Machinery, Springer, Cham., 1021-1031, (2015).

4. Markert, R., Platz, R. and Seidler, M.,. Model based fault identification in rotor systems by least
squares fitting, International Journal of Rotating Machinery, 7(5), 311-321, 2001

5. Jalan A.K. and Mohanty A.R. Model-based fault diagnosis of a rotor-bearing system for
misalignment and unbalance under steady-state condition, Journal of Sound and Vibration, 327 (3–
5), 604–622, (2009).

6. Miller B. A. and Samuel A. H. Identifying bearing rotor-dynamic coefficients using an extended

Kalman filter, Tribology Transactions, 52 (5), 671–679, (2009).

7. Khanam S., Dutt J.K. and Tandon N. Extracting Rolling Element Bearing Faults From Noisy
Vibration Signal Using Kalman Filter, Journal of Sound and Vibration 136, (3), 031008–031008–
11, (2014).

8. Shrivastava A. and Mohanty A.R., Detection of unbalance in a rotor-bearing system using a

deterministic-stochastic approach, 24th ICSV, London, UK, 2017.

9. Shrivastava, A., Mohanty A.R., Pekpe K. and Cassar J., Estimation of strain in a rotating
shaft using deterministic-stochastic approach, 1st ICEASSM, Accra, Ghana, 2017.
10. Gillijns S. and Moor B. De. Unbiased minimum-variance input and state estimation for linear
discrete-time systems with direct feedthrough, Automatica, 43 (5), 934–937, (2007).

11. Lourens E. , Papadimitriou C. , Gillijns S. ,Reynders E., Roeck G. De and Lombaert G. Joint input-
response estimation for structural systems based on reduced-order models and vibration data from
a limited number of sensors , Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 29, 310–327, (2012).