Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291

Caterpillar—an adaptive algorithm for detecting process changes

from acoustic emission signals
Geir Rune Flåtena , Ron Belchamberb , Mike Collinsb , Anthony D. Walmsleya,∗
a CPACT, Department of Chemistry, The University of Hull, Cottingham Road, Hull HU6 7RX, UK
b Process Analysis and Automation Ltd., Fernhill Road, Farnborough, Hampshire GU14 9RX, UK

Received 6 October 2004; received in revised form 16 December 2004; accepted 16 December 2004

Abstract

An adaptive algorithm for detecting process changes in a process monitored by acoustic emission is presented as an alternative to traditional
modelling techniques based on fixed or static models. This approach significantly reduces the need to remodel the process as operating
conditions change.
The central idea is that two moving windows are moved through the data side by side. The signal variation in one of them is modelled by
a principal component analysis (PCA) model, and the samples in the other window are compared to the critical borders of the PCA model.
Significant differences are interpreted as a process change, i.e. the acoustic emission from the process has changed. In this work acoustic
emission data from a fluidised bed is analysed. Optimal settings for the algorithm are proposed and the robustness towards noise and other
signal degradations is shown to be good. The algorithm seems to be batch independent, which means that regular re-calibration (blank runs)
which is needed by reference model approaches can be avoided.
© 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Acoustic emission; Fluidised bed; Adaptive; Process monitoring; Chemometrics; SIMCA; Caterpillar

1. Introduction
The feasibility of using acoustic emission as a process
monitoring tool has been studied in several industries [1,2]
such as wood [3], pharmaceutical [4], reaction monitoring [5]
and petrochemical [6]. Acoustic emission is particularly an
attractive tool for monitoring the performance of industrial
fluidised beds which are used in a number of major processes
including catalytic cracking of oil, production of polyethy-
lene and other important plastics and within the pharmaceu-
tical and food industries for granulation and drying of parti-
cles. The acoustic emissions are recorded and power spectra
are calculated by applying the Fourier transform to the raw
data. The power spectra give the intensity of acoustic signals
at different frequencies analogously to an infrared spectrum
where the absorbance at different wavelengths is given. How-
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: a.d.walmsley@hull.ac.uk (A.D. Walmsley).
ever, the acoustic emission spectra are less stable and have
lower resolution than optical spectra, and often frequencies
cannot be assigned to different functional groups. Moreover,
acoustic spectra from industrial fluidised beds, reflect extrin-
sic physical properties such as density, hardness, particle size
distribution of the fluidised particles as compared to optical
spectra which (primarily) reflect intrinsic chemical proper-
ties e.g. functional groups, concentrations. Hence acoustic
emission monitoring can be regarded as a complementary
technique to optical monitoring.
The underlying motivation in many acoustic emission-
monitoring set ups is that a trained operator can hear when
the process is going out of specification or there is a change
in state. Everyday examples include gear changes in cars and
washing machine cycles [7]. Acoustic emission monitoring is
thus a natural approach to measure and predict process upsets
or phase changes. Due to the generally large amount of data
in process monitoring chemometric techniques are necessary
in order to analyse and interpret the acoustic monitoring data

0003-2670/$ – see front matter © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.aca.2004.12.043
 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291
[8]. SIMCA (Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analo-
gies) [9] is a widely used technique for classifying acoustic
emission signals. In SIMCA a reference state e.g. an end-
point or a normal operation state, is modelled using a princi-
pal component. New samples are compared to this model in
order to detect end-point conditions or any deviations from
the norm (upsets). A problem for the SIMCA approach is
that physical changes in the process, such as changed parti-
cle size distribution and processing conditions may require
re-calculation of the reference model.
The application of MSPC (Multivariate Statistical Process
Control) techniques [10,11] to acoustic monitoring data has
so far not been reported in the literature. However, analo-
gously to the SIMCA approach these techniques rely on a
steady state or reference state model and are thus sensitive
towards process changes.
Recently, a moving window approach named ‘Caterpil-
lar’ was suggested for analysing acoustic monitoring data
for a fluidised bed reactor [6]. The general idea was to copy
the operator’s method of detection of a process change from
changes in the acoustic emission from the process by com-
paring the now-variation with recent variation. Two windows
side by side are moved step-wise through the data. One win-
dow is used as a reference window and a PCA model is used
to describe the variation for the samples in this window. The
samples in the other window, the prediction window, are com-
pared to the model for the reference or modelling window. If
several of the samples in the prediction window are signifi-
cantly different from the reference PCA model this is inter-
preted as a process change. Since both windows are moved
through the data the reference model will adapt to any pro-
cess changes so in the case of a process with several phases
the Caterpillar algorithm will detect the onset of every new
phase.
The adaptive nature of the Caterpillar algorithm also re-
moves the need for periodic remodelling or recalibration of
the system as the algorithm can adapt to time dependent
changes such as drift and offset. Obviously, SIMCA or other
reference model approaches must be regularly recalibrated
or updated. Easy maintenance is especially important in in-
dustrial applications as recalibration is time consuming and
may be operationally impossible. The continuous update of
the reference model also makes the Caterpillar algorithm less
sensitive to normal process variation, which results in rela-
tively few false alarms.
In this work, the Caterpillar algorithm is applied for
analysing monitoring data from a laboratory scale flu-
idised bed reactor where an agglomeration event is in-
duced. Agglomeration in industrial fluid bed reactors is an
undesired condition. Serious agglomeration incidents are
very costly to rectify and can result in considerable plant
downtime.
The settings of the algorithm such as window sizes and
number of components in the reference model are discussed.
Caterpillar’s robustness towards noise and other signal upsets
such as drift and shift is also checked.
281
2. Theory
2.1. Caterpillar
Caterpillar is a method, which uses the recent variation to
determine whether the now-variation is ‘normal’ or whether
any changes have occurred in the process. In the case of
acoustic measurements this emulates the function of the op-
erator’s ears: can we hear any changes in our fluidised bed?
The Caterpillar algorithm is outlined below while the cal-
culation details are given in Sections 2.1.1–2.1.3:
1. Two moving windows of width w are placed side by side.
Hence the total width is 2w samples. They are named the
‘modelling window’ and the ‘prediction window’, and the
‘prediction window’ is the rightmost, i.e. the most recent
measurements.
2. The systematic variation in the modelling window is rep-
resented by a k component PCA model, and the critical
variation dcrit is calculated using the T2 statistics.
3. The d values (T2 statistics) for the samples in the pre-
diction window is calculated and compared to dcrit . The
number of samples larger than the critical value is counted
and the result is shown in the occurrences plot, which is
explained in detail in Section 2.1.1.
4. The windows are moved to time t + 1 (or t + a where a is
an integer) and the process is repeated from step 2. In the
case of an online set up the windows are moved for each
new recording of data.
The window sizes w and the number of components k are
determined before starting the Caterpillar monitoring. This
can be done using historical data or knowledge of similar
systems as suggested in Section 2.1.2.
2.1.1. PCA decomposition and T2 statistics
Assume that X is the m × n acoustic data matrix containing
all the monitoring data describing any process, m the number
of time points or measurements in the data and n is the num-
ber of measured variables or frequencies. The modelling and
prediction windows mentioned in the Caterpillar algorithm
outline (previous section) are then two w × n matrices, which
can be referred to by Xmod and Xpred , respectively. In the fur-
ther discussion, Xmod is assumed to be mean centred and
Xpred is assumed to be scaled accordingly.
The k component PCA model can be written as:
Xmod = Tmod Ptmod + E (1)
where Tmod is the w × k scores matrix, Ptmod is the k × n
loadings matrix (t indicates matrix transpose) and E is the
w × n residual matrix. As always the k scores are mutually
orthogonal, the k loadings are mutually orthonormal and the
residuals matrix contains the variation not explained by the
PCA model.
The scores for the w samples in the prediction window are
calculated by projection onto the PCA model describing the
282 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291

variation in the modelling window:
Tpred = Xpred Pmod
where Xpred is the w × n data matrix containing the w sam-
ples in the prediction window. Tpred is the w × k scores matrix
and Pmod is the n × k loadings matrix obtained from (1).
The T2 statistics for sample i, di , are calculated as (remem-
ber that the scores are centered already) [11]:
ti tti
di =
 (3)
1 t
w−1 Tmod Tmod
where ti is the 1 × k score values for sample i and Tmod is
the w × k scores matrix obtained from (1). Eq. (3) is used for
samples from both the prediction and the modelling window.
The critical value for the T2 statistics, dcrit , is calculated
as [11]:
k(w2 − 1)
dcrit = Fα,k,w−k
w(w − k)
where k and w correspond to the number of components
and the number of samples used to build the reference PCA
model, respectively. F is the F-statistics at significance level
α with the given degrees of freedom.
2.1.2. Choosing window sizes and number of
components
Analogously to SIMCA approaches it is suggested to use
areas with reference variation to determine reasonable win-
dow sizes w and the right number of components k to be
used in the PCA modelling. However, as opposed to SIMCA
where the reference model is system specific the Caterpillar
(2)
approach is also working when only experiences with similar
systems are applied. This is due to the more adaptive nature
of Caterpillar.
If reference data are available the suggested approach is
to analyse these data by the Caterpillar algorithm using dif-
ferent window sizes and different number of components.
The number of atypical samples (d > dcrit ) in each predic-
tion window is counted. As the number of atypical samples
should be low (∼0) for the reference data, a combination
of window sizes and number of components that gives few
atypical samples are chosen. An additional criterion is that
the modelling window should be wide in order to give the
best possible representation of the variation in all stages of
the process. This means that some subjectivity is connected
to the selection of w and k. The modelling and prediction
window should be of the same size so that ‘like is compared
(4) with like’.
Obviously, the significance level α must also be chosen,
but this is done according to prevailing statistical considera-
tions. In the case of monitoring process changes as few false
positives as possible is wanted so the α-value is set high, i.e.
α = 0.99.
Typically a range of window sizes are tested but not neces-
sarily as a series since the magnitude is more important than
the exact window size. Here, w is tested from 10 to 100 in
steps of 5, while models with 1–10 components are tested.
This search strategy gives response surfaces similar to the one
shown in Fig. 1. The response is the total number of atypi-

Fig. 1. The response surface shows the occurrences for different combinations of window sizes and number of components for the reference region in the
analysed data. The optimal settings for the Caterpillar algorithm are combinations with few occurrences and wide windows.
 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291
cal samples (d > dcrit ) for the given settings of window size
and number of components. The details of the interpretation
of Fig. 1 is discussed in Section 4, but generally a combina-
tion of window size and number of components that give few
atypical samples are chosen.
Importantly, the systematic testing of window sizes and
number of components gives information on how many atypi-
cal samples one can expect from any combination. The num-
ber of atypical samples found in the reference data for the
chosen window size and number of components is used as
a base level in the later application of the Caterpillar al-
gorithm. More atypical samples than this base level is de-
manded in order to accept atypical samples as a sign of
process changes.
2.1.3. Operator information—occurrences plot
The occurrences plot is suggested as a feasible operator
tool for detecting process changes using the Caterpillar algo-
rithm since the occurrences plot compresses the information
in the prediction windows into single numbers. ‘Occurrences’
is the term chosen to represent atypical samples (d > dcrit ). At
each time point the number of atypical samples in the cor-
responding prediction window is counted and the result is
indicated in the occurrences plot. A high number of atypical
samples compared to the base level (see previous section) in-
dicates that a process change, e.g. upset, is happening. How-
ever, it should be emphasized that the Caterpillar algorithm
detects any unusual changes in the measurement signal so
the cause of the upset must be determined by other means. In
addition to being a useful tool for monitoring the entire pre-
diction window, the occurrences plot is robust in the sense that
a single outlier in the prediction window is not interpreted as
a process change.
A true process change is always reflected by a series of
occurrences. This is especially important since a confidence
level of 0.95 means that 5 out of every 100 samples can be
atypical before there is a significant change in the process.
Hence, if a window size w of 20 is used, 1 atypical sam-
ple can be expected in every window. Another feature of
the occurrences plot is that the ‘base level’ can be set ac-
cording to the preliminary analyses for determining window
widths and number of components. Thus the normal num-
ber of occurrences can be ignored or eliminated from the
plot and all attention is easily directed towards significant
process changes.
The information reflected in the occurrences plot at time t
is the number of occurrences observed in the prediction win-
dow including the measurements from time t − w to t. This
means that the information in the occurrences plot is lagged
with w time points, i.e. changes in the process can be de-
tected up to w time points after they actually occurred. In the
case of acoustics monitoring, this is usually not a problem as
new measurements easily are sampled each second or faster.
Hence the lag is only 20 s at the most if the window size is
20 and this is small enough to still give an early warning for
upsets such as agglomeration.
283
2.2. SIMCA
In SIMCA a set of reference samples, Xref , which de-
scribes the reference state e.g. stable process or smoothly
running fluidised bed, is selected. The dimension of the ref-
erence set is r × n, where r is the number of reference sam-
ples and n the number of variables, here frequencies. A PCA
model describing the group of reference samples is built anal-
ogously to Eq. (1) using:
Xref = Tref Ptref + E (5)
where the matrices Tref and Pref represent the scores and
loadings, respectively. They consist of k score and loading
vectors, which describe the variation in the reference set.
Usually, the number of components is decided by means of
cross-validation [12]. E is the r × n residual matrix, which
contains the variation in the reference set that is not explained
by the model. Non-reference samples are compared to the
model using:
tfit = xi Pref (6)
ei = xi − tfit Ptref (7)
where the vector tfit represents the scores for sample xi when
fitted to the model, and ei is the deviation from the model for
sample i, i.e. the residual. The residuals are used to calculate
the residual standard deviations (R.S.D.) according to:

eti ei
R.S.D.i = (8)
n−k
Eq. (8) is applied for the samples that do not belong to the ref-
erence set. For the R reference

samples
 R.S.D.
 i is multiplied
r−1
by a correction factor c c = r−k−1 in order to obtain
R.S.D.i,ref [9].
The mean of the R.S.D. values for the reference set,
R.S.D.ref , is used to determine the border of the model,
R.S.D.crit , using:

R.S.D.crit = R.S.D.2ref · Fcrit (9)
where Fcrit is the F value at the selected level of significance α,
i.e. Fα,(n−k),(n−k)(r−k−1) . Samples with R.S.D. values larger
than R.S.D.crit are judged to be different from the reference
samples.
3. Experimental/data
The data analysed in this work are passive acoustic moni-
toring data describing a laboratory scale fluidised bed, which
is sprayed with a liquid in order to induce agglomeration.
The acoustics monitoring is done by commercially avail-
able equipment (GranuMet, Process Analysis and Automa-
tion Ltd., Farnborough, UK). A resonant acoustic emission
sensor (resonant frequency 190 kHz) transducer is mounted
284 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291
external to the fluidised bed. The signal is converted to an
RMS representation electronically, and this RMS signal is
digitally sampled at a rate appropriate to the process (typ-
ically in the order of 100 Hz). From this time series data a
spectrum is calculated using the FFT algorithm. To improve
the reproducibility of the spectrum several spectra are aver-
aged. In this case, the averaged spectrum has 64 points or
discrete frequencies, which is then used as ‘finger-print’ of
the process condition.
The spectra are imported into MATLAB 6.5 (MathWorks,
Natick, MA), and all calculations are done in this environment
using a combination of in-house routines, routines from the
PLS-toolbox (Eigenvector Research, Manson, WA), and rou-
tines from the Statistics toolbox (MathWorks, Natick, MA).
4. Results and discussion
The time profiles for the 64 frequencies are shown in Fig. 2
and the three main phases of the process is indicated. The
first phase is a steady-state phase where the fluidised bed is
operated under normal conditions. In the second phase, the
fluidised powders are sprayed with a liquid and a transient
agglomeration is induced. The process returns to almost nor-
mal operating conditions before it is sprayed again and a ma-
jor agglomeration (non-recoverable) event is induced (third
phase).
If acoustic emission data for the whole process is available
it is usually easy to spot the process phases for a fluidised
bed using a score plot. In Fig. 3, the score plot of the two
first scores of the mean centred Savitzky-Golay smoothed
Fig. 2. The changes in the acoustic signal over time are shown. The three phases of the process are indicated as blocks below the data.
(33 points wide second order polynomial) data with the time
profile indicated by increasing size of the points. The process
starts in the region near the point (−0.5, 0), it moves to the
left for the transient agglomeration and moves over on the
right-hand side with scores larger than 0 along component
1 for the major agglomeration event. However, in process
monitoring the major objective is to detect process changes
as they happen. In this perspective PCA of historical data is
not feasible or appropriate.
In the Caterpillar approach two windows are moved side
by side through the data as it is collected. Possible process
changes are detected by comparing the samples in the pre-
diction window (most recent samples) with a PCA model
describing the systematic variation for the samples in the
modelling window. The first step in the Caterpillar approach
is to choose the window size, for the moving windows, and the
number of components to use for modelling. This can be done
by systematic testing of different window sizes and number
of components of data from a reference region as outlined
in Section 2.1.2. Time point 1–400 is defined as the refer-
ence region for the data analysed in this work. The response
surface for different window sizes and number of compo-
nents in the reference model is shown in Fig. 1. The window
sizes w are varied in the range of 10–100 in steps of 5, and
the models with 1–10 components are tested. The response
function is the total number of occurrences throughout the ref-
erence region, i.e. samples in the prediction windows that are
significantly different (d > dcrit ) from the models describing
the variation in the corresponding modelling windows. Large
window sizes and few number of components is generally
performing poorly (many occurrences) while small window
 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291 285

Fig. 3. The score plot of the two first components from the PCA model clearly shows the time profile of the process. Time is indicated by increasing size of
the time points.

sizes and many components are generally performing well as ‘Reference’ in Fig. 2). A six component SIMCA model
(few occurrences). This is as expected, but the challenge is of the mean-centred data was built and the relative standard
to find a combination with a relatively wide window and a deviations (R.S.D.) for the remaining samples were calcu-
reasonable number of components (parsimonious principle) lated. In Fig. 4b the R.S.D. values for the different times are
with a good performance. The area of feasible combinations shown and the critical R.S.D. value is indicated (horizontal
is indicated in Fig. 1. In the further analyses, six components line). The reference samples are indicated by a dashed line
and a window size of 65 points has been used. and their R.S.D. values are (mostly) below R.S.D.crit while
It is suggested to use a reference region to find the optimal most of the non-reference samples have higher R.S.D.fit val-
algorithm settings, although this is not always critical. For the ues than the critical value. Clearly, it is difficult to recognise
data discussed in this paper a subset including the samples the different stages in the process since the reference set is
from time 1200 to 1643 were tested for different window pre-defined and fixed.
sizes and number of components. The main features of the
resulting response surface were similar to those in Fig. 1. 4.1. Shift in signal
In spite of this, it is recommended to use a reference region
to find the optimal algorithm settings. Especially as using a A shift in the signal is simulated by adding a random
reference region known to contain no process changes gives value in the range [ 0 1 ] to each of the frequencies, and
a known reference number of occurrences, e.g. zero. the added values are allowed to be different from frequency
Running the Caterpillar algorithm with six components in to frequency. The calculation of the shifted data, Xshift , can
the reference models and a window size w of 65 resulted in be formulated as:
the occurrences plot shown in Fig. 4a. The horizontal dashed
line indicates the base level (i.e. [1]) for the occurrence plot, Xshift = X + 1 · a (10)
i.e. the number of occurrences in the reference region as ob-
tained from Fig. 1. Occurrences above the base level indicate
a change in the acoustic signal, e.g. a process change. Clearly, Table 1
the occurrences plot reports five events in the data as indi- Occurrence Time Possible event
cated with the letters A–E in Fig. 4a. The five detected events A 09:41:04 Spraying starts
coincide with different process events as listed in Table 1. All B 09:44:20 Transient agglomeration
major process events are detected. C 09:50:27 End of transient agglomeration.
The data was also analysed using the SIMCA. The samples D 09:54:43 Spraying
E 09:57:21 Agglomeration
from time 1 to 400 were included in a reference set (labelled
286 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291

Fig. 4. (a) The occurrences plot from the Caterpillar algorithm is shown. The five major events in the analysed process is easily recognised and labelled by
letters A–E in the figure. The horizontal line is the base level of the occurrences plot and (b) the R.S.D. values for the samples fitted to a six-component SIMCA
model built from the 400 first-time points are shown. The reference samples are indicated by a dashed line, and the horizontal line is the critical R.S.D. value,
i.e. the border of the SIMCA model.

where X is the original data, 1 is a m × 1 column vector of data are indicated by negative occurrences in the same figure.
ones and a is a 1 × n vector of random values. Clearly the results are the same.
The occurrences plot obtained when analysing the shifted In Fig. 5b the R.S.D.fit values for the shifted data are
data is shown in Fig. 5a. The results using the non-shifted shown. The same model as developed for the original
 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291 287

Fig. 5. (a) The occurrences plot for the shifted data is shown. The occurrences for the non-disturbed data is shown as negative occurrences. The horizontal line
is the base level of the occurrences plot and (b) the R.S.D. values for the shifted samples fitted to a six-component SIMCA model built from the 400 first-time
points from the non-disturbed data are shown. The reference data interval is indicated by a dashed line, but do note that the shown R.S.D. values are those for
the shifted data. The horizontal line is the critical R.S.D. value, i.e. the border of the SIMCA model.

data is used in order to simulate a shift in the signal be- if the data are scaled by the means from the reference
tween calibration and measurement, and the R.S.D.crit bor- set, all samples are judged to be outside the model, and
der is indicated by the horizontal line. The results seem this would be a likely approach in an online applica-
to be the same as for the non-shifted data. However, tion.
288 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291

4.2. Drift in data
Drift in the data is simulated by adding a m × 1 linear
contribution lj to each of the n frequencies. The linear con-
tribution is of the type lj = bj u where bj is a constant which is
different for the different frequencies and u is the vector of
time points. The maximum value for lj is chosen randomly on
the interval [ 0 1 ] and bj is set accordingly. This is relatively
large values since the intensity of the original signal varies on
the interval [ 2 8 ] depending on the frequency. The results

Fig. 6. (a) The occurrences plot for the data with drift is shown. The occurrences for the non-disturbed data is shown as negative occurrences. The horizontal
line is the base level of the occurrences plot and (b) the R.S.D. values for the samples from data with drift fitted to a six-component SIMCA model built from
the 400 first-time points from the non-disturbed data are shown. The reference data interval is indicated by a dashed line, but do note that the shown R.S.D.
values are those for the data with drift. The horizontal line is the critical R.S.D. value, i.e. the border of the SIMCA model.
 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291 289

from running the Caterpillar algorithm on the data where drift
is added are shown in Fig. 6a. Comparing with the original
occurrences, which are indicated as negative values in the
figure the main events in the data are still detected in spite of
the added drift.
The R.S.D.fit values for the data where drift is added are
shown in Fig. 6b. The same model as developed for the orig-
inal data is used, and the R.S.D.crit border is indicated by the
horizontal line. In this case the reference set (dashed line) as
well as the non-reference samples are outside the model and
their distance to the model is increasing with time (expected
due to the drift). It is also worth noticing that any features of
the non-reference samples are lost compared to the original
R.S.D.fit values (Fig. 4b).

Fig. 7. The occurrences plot for the data with different types of noise is shown. The occurrences for the noise-free data is shown as negative occurrences. The
horizontal line is the base level of the occurrences plot. (a) Random noise; (b) heteroscedastic noise; (c) 1/f noise.
290 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291
Fig. 7. (Continued ).
4.3. Noise in data
The robustness of the Caterpillar algorithm towards dif-
ferent types of noise including random or additive noise, het-
eroscedastic and 1/f noise is tested. Additive noise results
from electrical noise in the measurement system, interfer-
ence from other processes, etc., and is generally independent
of the process in question. 1/f noise and other heteroscedastic
noises are related to the natural variation in the process. The
1/f component is associated with slow drifts in the process
conditions.
4.3.1. Random noise
The random noise is simulated by adding random numbers
from a normal distribution with mean zero, standard devia-
tion 0.1 and variance 0.01. The results from the Caterpillar
algorithm using the earlier mentioned settings are shown in
Fig. 7a. All the main events in the data are still detected as
can be seen in Fig. 7a. SIMCA does not perform well when
noise is added and the noise-free model is used as the refer-
ence. Most of the samples including the reference samples are
outside the model. However, if the reference region from the
noisy data is used SIMCA perform similarly to the noise-free
data (Fig. 4b).
4.3.2. Heteroscedastic noise
Heteroscedastic (or multiplicative) noise varies in mag-
nitude with the intensity of the signal. In this work het-
eroscedastic noise was simulated by multiplying each ele-
ment in the signal matrix with random numbers from a nor-
mal distribution with mean 0 and standard deviation 0.05
giving noise with variation spans up to [ −1.5 1.3 ]. The
heteroscedastic noise was added to the data matrix and the
Caterpillar algorithm was run using the earlier mentioned
settings.
The results from the Caterpillar algorithm are shown in
Fig. 7b. Again, all the main events in the data are detected in
the occurrences plot. In the SIMCA modelling all the sam-
ples including the reference samples are classified as being
different from the noise-free reference model. Using a refer-
ence model with noise gives SIMCA performance similar to
the noise-free data (Fig. 4b).
4.3.3. 1/f noise
1/f noise is inversely proportional to the frequency. The
1/f noise is simulated by first creating a linear profile l of
length n. The first element is 1, the last 0.2, and the oth-
ers are chosen so that l is linear. The elements in the lin-
ear profile is repeatedly multiplied by a random number
from a uniform distribution on the interval [ 4 4.2 ] in or-
der to build the m × n 1/f noise matrix. The 1/f noise ma-
trix is added to the original data and the Caterpillar algo-
rithm is run using the same settings as earlier. The results
are shown in Fig. 7c. As for the other types of noise the
main events in the fluidised bed process are detected, and in
this case all the events seen in Fig. 4a are contained. Again,
all the samples including the reference samples are classi-
fied as being different from the noise-free reference model in
the SIMCA modelling unless a reference model with noise
is used.
 G.R. Flåten et al. / Analytica Chimica Acta 544 (2005) 280–291
5. Conclusions
The Caterpillar algorithm is presented and demonstrated
on acoustic data from a laboratory scale fluidised bed. The
settings for the algorithm are discussed and it is proposed
how the algorithm performance can be optimised by using
a reference region to choose the optimal algorithm settings.
It is also shown that the algorithm is robust towards differ-
ent types of noise, and shift and drift in the signal for the
studied data. This is a possible indication that the Caterpillar
algorithm settings are transferable between similar systems
and batch independent. Clearly, system transferability and
batch independency are very advantageous features and thus
interesting to confirm in future research.
The algorithm was robust towards the types of signal dis-
turbances tested in this work implying the hypothesis that
the need for recalibration is minimal. If this hypothesis gen-
erally holds the building and maintenance of training models,
which are work intensive parts of using SIMCA models are
minimised. Additionally, the Caterpillar algorithm seems to
perform as well or better than the SIMCA approach in mon-
itoring changes in the process.
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