2017 International Conference on Sensing, Diagnostics, Prognostics, and Control
Understanding Theories and Methods on Equipment Operational Reliability
Assessment
Heng Zhang, Xin Zhang, Zhiwen Liu, Qiang Miao
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Sichuan University
Chengdu, China
Email: mqiang@scu.edu.cn
Abstract—Operating reliability has great significance for
equipment condition monitoring and health evaluation. In
terms of equipment to be evaluated, reliability assessment is a
personalized problem. Traditional reliability assessment
method relies on the probability and mathematical statistics
methods, and has limited practical significance when it is used
for real-time monitoring of a specific equipment. In this paper,
the characteristics and challenges of operational reliability
assessment for large equipment are analyzed, and the methods
and improvements in this research are summarized. In general,
the operational reliability assessment methods are divided into
two categories, which are model-based methods and
mapping-based methods. In the end, some suggestions are
given for future research directions.
Keywords—operational reliability; condition monitoring
features; proportional hazard model
I. INTRODUCTION
The safe service and reliable operation of large
equipment, such as aircrafts, ships, vehicles, machining
tools, have great significance to national economic
development and defense security. However, with complex
operating conditions and harsh environment, these large
equipment suffer from gradual aging, and their operational
reliability will gradually decrease in the long-term running
process, which easily lead to vicious accidents, resulting in
huge property damage and casualties. In order to solve this
problem, regular maintenance and replacement is the choice
in most instances at present. However, huge waste of
resources and increase of cost is unavoidable by regular
maintenance [1]. In addition, when maintenance action is
not taken timely, this method leads to casualties and adverse
social impact. Thus, accurate acquisition of large equipment
real-time operational reliability has great significance to
ensure safe operation of equipment, and improve economic
efficiency.
Dynamic running process, complex operating
environment and some other unpredictable factors can bring
new variables to predict remaining useful life of equipment,
which makes traditional methods based on the statistics and
probability difficult to work [2]. In order to predict
remaining life, a more useful estimation method is needed.
Zio [3] conducted a profound insight into the challenge of
reliability engineering, and proposed the method based on
978-1-5090-4020-9/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE 367
DOI 10.1109/SDPC.2017.76
condition monitoring and fault diagnosis techniques to
ensure reliable operation of system.
In this paper, the characteristics and challenges of
operational reliability assessment for large equipment are
discussed in section II, and some improvements on
operational reliability assessment techniques are reviewed
in section III. Later, suggestions are given for reference in
section IV.
II. CHARACTERISTICS AND CHALLENGES OF
OPERATIONAL RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR LARGE
EQUIPMENT
After nearly a century of development, the study on
reliability have achieved fruitful results in theory and
practice. Probability and statistics are the main
mathematical methods in the traditional reliability
assessment, which requires numerous sample data to be
used in the traditional reliability assessment [4]. In other
words, large failure sample data, repeatable sample life test
or accelerated life test is essential. However, the reliability
assessment of large equipment is often labelled as the small
sample size problem [2]. In addition, repeatable accelerated
life tests are almost impossible for large equipment.
Therefore, the traditional reliability assessment methods
cannot reflect reliability of a particular individual.
Because the traditional reliability analysis method is
difficult to describe real-time dynamic running
characteristics of equipment, some researchers proposed the
concept of real-time, dynamic reliability evaluation [3].
Dynamic monitoring data (e.g., displacement, speed,
acceleration, noise, acoustic emission, stress, strain,
temperature, pressure, power, etc.) based on condition
monitoring techniques can provide useful information about
the reliability of individual equipment [5]. In engineering
practices, these dynamic monitoring data were obtained
through a wide variety of sensors, and reliability of
equipment can be predicted through these dynamic
monitoring data [6]. In the process of operational reliability
assessment for large equipment, there are many challenges
and problems, which can be summarized as follows.
1) How to extract exact state feature is the first
question. Due to complicated operational environment of
equipment, dynamic monitoring data contain many noises in
engineering practice [7]. The feature extraction of dynamic
monitoring data is mainly based on the state response, the
time domain response or the frequency domain response
analysis. Because of the external disturbance factors, strong
uncertainty exists in these dynamic monitoring features,
which may cause feature overlap, weaken or even disappear.
It is difficult to obtain accurate characteristic information
[8]. For example, the vibration monitoring data of a gearbox
in a helicopter drive system provide useful dynamic
information. However, the acceleration sensor collects both
the vibration characteristics of the fuselage and the noise
from the engine at the same time [9].
2) How to select the characteristics that have great
significance to the operational reliability assessment from
these state features is another question. Among many
condition monitoring features, not all features are useful for
operational reliability assessment. Some extracted features
from equipment may not be significant for the operational
reliability assessment. In addition, excessive state features
greatly increase the amount of calculation. In order to reduce
computation burden, it is necessary to pick the most useful
state features.
3) How to obtain operational reliability of equipment
by integrating these useful features is the last question.
Technically, reliability is often defined as the probability that
a component or system will perform a required function for a
given period of time when used under stated operating
conditions. These state features need to be transformed into
the probability that the equipment can perform a required
function [10]. Therefore, the meaning of operational
reliability is given. Operational reliability is defined as the
ability that an equipment will perform a required function in
the operational status of its parts for a given period of time
when used under stated operating conditions [2].
III. IMPROMENTS ON OPERATIONAL RELIABILITY
ASSESSMENT
In view of challenges existing in equipment operation
reliability evaluation, a lot of research has been conducted
to improve traditional reliability assessment method, and a
comprehensive investigation is conducted to help potential
readers understand the intrinsic meaning of this topic.
In order to extract useful state features from dynamic
monitoring data containing heavy noises in engineering
practice, signal processing methods was used by many
scholars. The similarity between operational reliability
assessment and fault diagnosis is that both are based on
equipment health condition monitoring. Therefore, they
need to use signal processing methods to obtain equipment
health conditions. In the operational reliability assessment,
signal processing methods can be generally divided into
time domain analysis, frequency domain analysis and
time-frequency domain analysis. Time domain analysis
methods include waveform analysis, statistical parameter
analysis, time series analysis, correlation analysis, adaptive
denoising, principle component analysis [11-14], etc.
However, obtaining the characteristics of the signal not only
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needs to understand time domain analysis, but also needs to
understand its frequency domain characteristics. The
frequency domain analysis convert the time domain signal
to the corresponding frequency domain information. The
frequency domain characteristics can be obtained directly
from the corresponding frequency domain information.
In order to select informative characteristics for
operational reliability assessment, some of health condition
indicators have been defined. At present, the root mean
square (RMS) and spectrum kurtosis (SK) are commonly
used as health indicators to analyze the status of equipment.
The root mean square usually reflects a gradual decline
along with equipment operation process, while the spectrum
kurtosis usually shows a sudden decline in the state of
equipment. Ding [15] incorporated the root mean square
and spectral kurtosis into the proportional hazard model and
proposed an equipment operational reliability assessment
method based on dynamic degradation signal. In addition to
RMS and SK, there are some other indicators. Sun et al. [10]
extracted the acoustic emission signal, force signal and
vibration signal from the cutting tool under running state
and established the subspace matrix. The minimum
principal angle of subspace matrix under running state and
subspace matrix under normal state was converted into the
operational reliability of the cutting tool. Liu et al. [16]
pointed out that vibration response of a failure system is an
impulse component, and the vibration caused by abrasion is
the harmonic component in a bearing rotor system. For
impulse and harmonic component extraction, a
morphological component analysis (MCA) method based
on basis pursuit denoising (BPDN) is used to decompose
the vibration signals and reconstruct the impulse signals.
Then classical time domain indexes of impulse signals are
used as the observation sequence of a corresponding
Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to assess operational
reliability.
Previously, the method of reliability calculation was
either the probability value obtained by multiple tests or the
estimated value derived from the failure model of
equipment. However, the working environment of
equipment is too complex and difficult to determine. Many
new methods are used to calculate new reliability, which is
a function of time. At present, these methods are divided
into two categories, namely, model-based methods and
mapping-based methods.
The first method is to incorporate operating conditions
into the model to get the reliability of equipment. The
proportional hazards model developed by Cox [17] is a
widely accepted semi-parametric model for operational
reliability assessment with covariates. Mendes and fard [18]
improved the proportional hazard model by evaluating
time-dependence for covariates. Ding [15] analyzed the
operational reliability of the rolling bearing with the
proportional hazards model. In view of the unknown type of
life distribution for equipment under standard
environmental conditions, Hong et al. [19] proposed to use
the variable environmental data to determine the baseline
failure rate and to transform the proportional risk model. In
addition, the influence of environment factors on the
reliability of product are measured quantificationally [20].
In terms of equipment to be evaluated, hard and soft failure
modes generally coexist. Accordingly, it increases the
assessment difficulty, not to mention the sparse historical
failure data. In order to solve this problem, Liu et al. [21]
proposed the integrated PHMIPCM method that takes into
account the influence of environmental covariates, and
utilizes more than one associated response covariates at the
same time. In addition to the proportional hazards model,
there are some other models. Hidden Markov model (HMM)
is a statistical model, which is used to describe a hidden
unknown parameters of the Markov process. Liu et al. [16]
used classical time domain indexes of impulse signals as the
observation sequence of a corresponding hidden Markov
models (HMM) to assess operational reliability. Wang et al.
[22] established two-parameter mixture Weibull distribution
model to analyze the operational reliability of tractor. Li et
al. [23] used the logistic regression models (LRMs) and
acoustic emission (AE) signal to evaluate the operational
reliability of cutting tool.
The mapping-based model generally maps the distance
between the running state feature and the normal state
feature to the reliability. The operational reliability [2] is a
normalized metric for the probability that the equipment
perform a required function, which is determined by the
operational state of its parts under specified conditions and
time. Sun et al. [10] mapped the minimum principal angle
of subspace matrix under running state and subspace matrix
under normal state into the operational reliability and gave
the remaining useful life of the cutting tool. He et al. [2]
summarized a number of methods to map the running
characteristic eigenvalues to operational reliability, such as
correlation coefficient method, cohesion function method,
kurtosis index method, spectral distance index method, state
parameter method, fractal dimension method, wavelet
information entropy method, the nuclear principal
component method, etc. He et al. [24] transformed the
normalized wavelet information entropy into the reliability
value to evaluate the assembled quality reliability for a kind
of dismountable disk-drum aero-engine. Aiming at solving
the problem that reliability assessment methods based on
probability statistical analysis are inappropriate to assess the
reliability of the individual aero-engine, Sun [25]
transformed the principal angles between the subspaces
from the normal state and the damage state into operating
reliability index by a proper mapping function. Wang [26]
mapped the feature subspace angle between current state
and normal state into the operational reliability by a proper
mapping relationship.
IV. FURTHER DISCUSSIONS
In view of challenges existing in equipment operational
reliability assessment, it can be summarized that the
relevant research work could be carried out from the
following aspects.
(1) More research work on the fault mechanism and
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signal feature extraction of equipment should be carried out
[2]. The fault mechanism is the essence, while the signal
characteristic is the appearance. Crossing research on
essence and appearance will provide a great deal of support
for operational reliability assessment.
(2) More research work on choosing the optimal
damage and fault feature for specific equipment should be
carried out [2]. Different equipment have different failure
mechanism, and the appropriate damage and fault
characteristics of them are also different. Choosing a good
damage and fault characteristics can better reflect the status
of equipment.
(3) More research work on combining artificial
intelligence with operational reliability should be carried out.
By using artificial intelligence techniques to carry out
operation reliability assessment for large equipment, the
accurate model does not need to be established.
V. CONCLUDING REMARKS
This paper analyzed the characteristics and challenges
of the operation reliability assessment for large equipment
and summarized the research status and the related
technques. These methods are mainly divided into two
categories, which are model-based method and
mapping-based method.
In view of the challenges and deficiencies of the
operation reliability assessment for large equipment, some
suggestions are given for future research.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was partially supported by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51675355
and 51275554).
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