Abstract and Biography

Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry Optimized Application of Feature Extraction Techniques
by Andre J. Smulders SKF Condition Monitoring

Abstract
Recent advancements in envelope enhancement techniques as applied to acceleration and acoustics emissions signals have led to new measurement solutions for many vibration problems. This paper discusses the theory of enveloping and how it is implemented in practice. It presents a paper machine case study that illustrates how a rolling element bearing defect develops. Also some case studies showing the strength of analysis in a modulating environment will be discussed. Measurement setups are very important for good analysis and ease of recognition of symptoms. This will be illustrated with a case study too.

Biography
ANDRE J. SMULDERS SKF Condition Monitoring Andre J. Smulders holds a master degree in Electrical Engineering and a bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering. He worked in the computer industry, the semi-conductor industry and the sensor industry before joining SKF in 1981. Has developed the Condition Monitoring technologies as applied by SKF Condition Monitoring today. He is the co-inventor of SEE technology and holds patents in the fields of semiconductors, sensor technologies, measurement techniques and in the field of signal analysis. He has been a part time professor at a technical high school for a number of years. He was involved of the start up of SKF Condition Monitoring in 1989. He has been involved in the development of techniques and applications in the field of Condition Monitoring and Quality Monitoring.

SKF Condition Monitoring

Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry Optimized Application of Feature Extraction Techniques
by Andre J. Smulders SKF Condition Monitoring
Copyright 2000 by SKF Condition Monitoring, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Abstract
Recent advancements in envelope enhancement techniques as applied to acceleration and acoustics emissions signals have led to new measurement solutions for many vibration problems. This paper discusses the theory of enveloping and how it is implemented in practice. It presents a paper machine case study that illustrates how a rolling element bearing defect develops. Also some case studies showing the strength of analysis in a modulating environment will be discussed. Measurement setups are very important for good analysis and ease of recognition of symptoms. This will be illustrated with a case study too.

Condition Monitoring An Historical Review

The main reason for condition monitoring is to prolong machinery life with the least overall cost. There are several measurement parameters that contribute to the evaluation of machinery health such as vibration, bearing temperature, lubrication, oil conditions, pressure that are measured on a periodic basis to assess the long term prognosis of the operating machine life. These machine condition parameters as applied to a monitoring program, are not the only factors in the attempt to achieve maximum reliability with minimum cost. The simplistic periodic visual inspection and the experienced technicians ear are more often equally important as diagnostic measures to augment the predictive maintenance program and avert catastrophic failures. An important aspect of the data loggers programmed route is to assure periodic

visits to every machine based on a critical machine priority that not only measures the assigned vibration points, but to perform visual and acoustic inspections as well. These machine conditions that are subjective evaluations are entered as maintenance notes to be reviewed later in the machine history file. In a sense, the periodic data logging sequence as defined by the predictive maintenance schedule serves inherently as a watchmans clock to assure a prioritized organized visitation by experienced personnel to every machine. The assessment of machine conditions, operating performance and status of auxiliary components valves piping, packing, loose bolts, flange leaks are then considered in total for recommended corrective maintenance actions. Condition monitoring has always existed where engine room personnel have felt, smelled or listened to machine sounds as symptomatic of abnormal machine performance. In these times of higher speeds, design limit operations, complex processes involving large populations of finite life machine components, more automatic controls resulting in minimum operations staff combined with spiralling maintenance costs and extreme down time production loss the need was created for warning diagnostic systems employing hardware and software sophisticated technology. These modern condition monitoring systems now include new measurement techniques which were untried and unproven in the immediate past. These modern methods are known to be viable as evidenced by the case studies that are incorporated in the last section of this article.

SKF Condition Monitoring

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The Ultimate Goal

In simple terms the main aim of the monitoring system is to first significantly reduce unexpected mechanical failures, thereby minimizing downtime production losses. This objective has been achieved generally by predictive maintenance programs that rely principally on a periodic data logging schedule, involving instruments measuring overall vibration data. These instruments often operate in conjunction with computer based programs that will trend the historical data of each measurement point and also allows the development of routes that can be downloaded to field instruments. The next level of the program goal is to recognize problems early enough to schedule repairs with minimum disruption to the operations. Such maintenance decisions require a sufficient assessment of the problem to assume a risk of failure with the consequences of an unscheduled shutdown. Todays predictive maintenance programs with the many vibration measurement tools available and the various analysis methods inherent in the associated software, give the maintenance engineer the opportunity to corrective measures that prolong machine service life, improve product quality and reduce production costs by running process speeds closer to the design limits. Although multiparameter measurements are required for a complete assessment of operating characteristic, vibration is the best measurement parameter for evaluating machine dynamic conditions that affect machine performance and service life. The effects of imbalance, misalignment, mechanical looseness, bearing defects, ineffective lubrication, shaft rubs are revealed as vibration characteristics that are often identified by some spectrum signature. The methods of feature extraction for problem

recognition have been developed and continue to be refined for both manually derived and automatic diagnostic decisions. The probable accuracy of these maintenance recommendations that is derived from these problem recognition methods, increases with more available detailed information concerning specific machine characteristics and its associated mechanical components. Oil condition monitoring provides an estimate of the deteriorating lubricating properties that can contribute to machine damage. Viscosity changes, contaminants and metal particles are some of lube oil detectable trends, that will over time affect, the wear of bearing surfaces. In addition to automatic vibration measurements and data transposition to organized files of data trending diagnostic analysis and new software extensions allow for expert analysis. These software additions to the traditional predictive maintenance software include programs that scan machine historical data with feature extraction algorithms to generate symptom files. These files are compared against resident diagnostic rules that are used to estimate the probable machine failure modes. The expert system then recommends maintenance actions based on these severity estimates.

Traditional Vibration Parameter Velocity

In the past field vibration measurements were usually performed using velocity transducers that did not require excitation. The electronic instrumentation measured overall values and the data was manually recorded. Vibration trends were plotted manually to determine the machine health status. Velocity measurements remain today an important measurable parameter since it is essentially related to vibration energy.

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Overall vibration velocity measurements are often compared to standardized alarm levels based on accumulated experience. These velocity alarms are constant levels applied over a wide frequency range. Velocity is a parameter linear to vibration and is proportional to sound pressure so correlated with the sound impression generated in a machine environment. The more universal transducer in use today is the piezoelectric accelerometer. The velocity measurement parameter is obtained by simple integration of acceleration.

of small harmonic amplitudes with a frequency separation equal to the repetitive rate. Compare the different amplitude/frequency relationships between a sinusoidal pure tone signal and a repetitive impulse. The impulse signal amplitude is proportional to the pulse width (-t) and pulse cycle interval (T). The smaller this ratio is that is, the narrower the pulse width the smaller are the spectrum amplitudes. This ratio is, of course, related to the width of the bearing defect. Initially, an accelerometer response signal is small in amplitude and narrow in time as each ball rolls over a newly developing fault. An acceleration spectrum plot at this early stage of defect growth would probably not show the defect as its amplitude is below the dynamic range of the measuring instrument. Vibration components identifying an incipient bearing failure are then not seen in an acceleration spectrum plot. However, enveloping technology, now implemented in many dataloggers and on-line systems that incorporate FFT analysis, has proven to be an effective measurement tool because it modifies the raw vibration signal so as to enhance the rolling element bearing defect signal and other comparable signal.

Feature Extraction Techniques

For Optimized Analysis and Ease of Diagnostics capabilities the strongest techniques known today is Acceleration Enveloping (or Demodulation in general as it can also be applied on other signals like motor currents or pressure signals). Enveloping addresses the problem of isolating small but significant impulse perturbations that are summed, during measurement, with larger, low frequency, stationary vibration signals, such as imbalance and misalignment. These small impulse signals come from the accelerometer response to impulsive forces from bearing race defects, from roller flat spots, from gear teeth interaction. Specifically related to a paper machine press sections, these signals may come from felt joint connectivity and/or felt dewatering anomalies. Although normal FFT spectrum analysis separates these signals into their fundamental and harmonics, the individual amplitudes are often too small to see above the instrumentation noise level. Because of this low signal-to-noise ratio, these small spectral components are not generally measurable in the early onset of a bearing or other machine fault. A small, narrow, repetitive impact signal, when converted to the frequency domain, results in a plot

The Basics of Enveloping

The envelope method separates a repetitive impulse from a complex vibration signal by using a band pass filter that rejects low frequency components that are synchronous with vibration. Although there are signal enhancements that result from structural resonances, the envelope method is completely independent on local resonance to isolate rolling element defect signals. This is very important as resonance frequencies and the damping at resonance are often not stable so not useful for a trend type analysis.

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Filter criteria selection is based on suitable rejection of the low frequency sinusoids while optimizing the passband of the defect harmonics. This also creates the possibility for separation of phenomenon. This is illustrated in the following figure. The figure provides the table of filter selections based on rotational speeds and shows the optimal band of analysis. After filtering the vibration signal, the resultant signal is enveloped by means of a circuit that approximates the squaring process of the signal. The enveloping process demodulates the signal which approximates a squaring function. This translates the signal in the frequency domain to a

baseband display of the repetition rate harmonic components, where the component amplitude versus frequency is equivalent to a sin x over x distribution. These displays would only be seen if there are repetitive impulse components in a part of the overall raw vibration signal. Another way of understanding this translation to baseband is to consider the bandpass filtered signal as only comprising the higher frequency harmonic components of the repetitive impulse. When this harmonic series is squared, sum and difference components are created. The difference components fold back into the analysis range while all of the summed components are outside the analysis range.

Enveloping Settings Microlog/Multilog PAPER MACHINE PRESS/FELT MONITORING

Filters Enveloping Frequency Felts/Press Rolls 5 100 Hz ROLL BEARINGS 50 1,000 Hz ROLL BEARINGS / GEARS 500 10,000 Hz GEARS 5,000 40,000 Hz High Pass Filter: 24 dB/octave Bessel Low Pass Filter: 12 dB/octave Bessel REMARK: In a application where gears are involved sometimes a lower envelope filter needs to be chosen to suppress the noise from gearmesh frequencies that are commonly very dominant. Speed Range Analyzing Range

0 50 RPM

0 10 Hz

25 500 RPM

0 100 Hz

250 5,000 RPM

0 1,000 Hz

2,500 RPM

0 10,000 Hz

Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry Optimized Application of Feature Extraction Techniques
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Fundamental Properties of Acceleration Enveloping/ Demodulation/Rectification

This feature extraction technique has a number of principles advantages and properties that make it ideal for signal extraction of non-sinusoidal signals and signals that are modulated by some carrier phenomenon. 1. SELECTIVE FILTERING so excludes specific sinusoidal signals. 2. DISCRIMINATION OF PHENOMENON by energy estimation in a specific selected frequency band. 3. PULSE ENHANCEMENT VERSUS SINUSOIDAL SIGNALS. Energy estimation focuses on peak phenomenon with correlated phase characteristics versus wavy type phenomenon. 4. SIGNAL-TO-NOISE IMPROVEMENT. An energy estimation enhances localized energy, concentrating FFT distributed peaks into its basebands. 5. Speed varying compensation as small phase shifts during rotation (non-constant rotational velocity) will be averaged-out. 6. INSTANTANEOUS SYNCHRONOUS TIME AVERAGING. Bringing energy to baseband frequency components enables the time record to be longer and so inherently does better synchronous averaging.

2. Pre-filtering with Constant Time Delay filters for good Peak reproduction. 3. Large bandwidth for optimal summation of energy. 4. Signal source separation by Optimal Pre-filter selection. 5. Time domain analysis so extraction is done without separation of coherent frequency components. 6. Low pass filter selection after Enveloping for rejection of Out-of-Band components.

Conclusion
The acceleration enveloping technique is emerging as a very practical measurement tool for assessing initial problems associated with bearings, rollers, and felt rotation. The very low speeds at which these measurements occur are often at sensitivity limits of transducers and electronics. In the past, synchronous time averaging over very long intervals was required to isolate problems to a particular roll by establishing external trigger references. Enveloping has proven its capabilities to extract impact force signals developed by roll eccentricity, flat spots, rolling element bearing defects and many other impulse type or modulating type signals. Although enveloping is not the panacea for diagnosing all machine problems, it is proving to be an adaptable and effective measurement method in the tool box of analysis techniques.

Preconditions for Optimal Enveloping

1. Sufficient signal-to-noise ratio in the measuring chain before Enveloping is performed.

Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry Optimized Application of Feature Extraction Techniques
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Case Studies
BEARING TEST RIG DEMONSTRATION Figure 1. Standard Velocity Measurement with defective bearing. Although bearing defect frequencies noticeable no clear indication as still many other frequency components are of the same level.

Figure 1.

Figure 2. Zoomed Velocity spectrum with rotational components visible but no significant bearing defect pattern.

Figure 2.

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Case Studies
BEARING TEST RIG DEMONSTRATION Figure 3. Enveloped Acceleration showing a clear discriminative spectrum of an Inner-race Defect Pattern.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

SEE spectrum (Enveloped Acoustic Emission spectrum) also showing the bearing defect pattern as indicating friction (progress of wear). The extra sidebands around the bearing defect modulation frequency peaks indicate a modulation by a low-frequency phenomenon likely uneven coupling loading.

Figure 4.

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Case Studies
BEARING DEFECT DEVELOPMENT ON A DRYER FELT ROLL Figure 5. Trend Plot of the Standard Velocity Measurement. No indication of a bearing defect visible.

Figure 5.

Figure 6. Velocity Spectrum showing a number of harmonic patterns but no clear indication of an Inner-race Defect Pattern.

Figure 6.

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Case Studies
BEARING DEFECT DEVELOPMENT ON A DRYER FELT ROLL Figure 7. Trend Plot of the Acceleration Enveloping Measurement. Good indication of a bearing defect development.

Figure 7.

Figure 8. Enveloped Acceleration Spectrum showing a clear discriminative spectrum of an Innerrace Defect Pattern.

Figure 8.

Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry Optimized Application of Feature Extraction Techniques
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Case Studies
OPTIMAL MEASUREMENT SETUP ON DRYER CAN Figure 9. Spectrum Plot of the Acceleration Enveloping Measurement. Although the bearing defect is visible the pattern is not extremely clear. The measurement TIMELENGTH was too short. This is defined by the selected Bandwidth versus the chosen RESOLUTION (LINES). Timelength = Lines / Bandwidth Optimal timelength is 10 15X the time for one shaft rotation.

Figure 9.

Figure 10. Time plot belonging to Figure 9. The measurement Timelength does not contain sufficient revolutions of the shaft to built a clear spectral pattern.

Figure 10.

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Case Studies
OPTIMAL MEASUREMENT SETUP ON DRYER CAN Figure 11. Spectrum Plot of the Acceleration Enveloping Measurement. The bearing defect is clearly visible with a clear sideband pattern so indicative for an innerrace defect pattern. The selected measurement Timelength is optimally chosen.

Figure 11.

Figure 12. Time plot belonging to Figure 11. The measurement Timelength does contain sufficient revolutions of the shaft (modulation) to built a clear spectral pattern.

Figure 12.

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Case Studies
PRESS SECTION FELT ANOMALY WITH MODULATION DRIVE TRAIN PATTERN Figure 13. Time plot indicating the Felt repetition pattern (see also Figure 14) modulated by a DRIVE TRAIN control loop problem.

Figure 13.

Figure 14. Zoomed Time plot indicating the Felt repetition pattern. These patterns are indicative of uneven dewatering characteristics in the felt.

Figure 14.

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Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry Optimized Application of Feature Extraction Techniques
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Case Studies
PRESS SECTION FELT ANOMALY WITH MODULATION DRIVE TRAIN PATTERN Figure 15. Spectrum Plot of the Acceleration Enveloping Measurement. The FELT pattern is clearly visible. The sideband pattern indicative for a modulation pattern becomes clearer after zooming (see Figure 16).

Figure 15.

Figure 16. Zoomed Spectrum Plot of the Acceleration Enveloping Measurement. The modulation caused by the drive train driving the Fourth press is clearly positioned around the spectral Felt Pattern.

Figure 16.

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