Online Condition Monitoring of Gripper Cylinder in TBM Based on EMD Method

The gripper cylinder that provides braced force for Tunnel Boring Machine （TBM） might fail due to severe vibration when the TBM excavates in the tunnel. Early fault diagnosis of the gripper cylinder is important for the safety and efficiency of the whole tunneling project. In this paper, an online condition monitoring system based on the Empirical Mode Decomposition （EMD） method is estab- lished for fault diagnosis of the gripper cylinder while TBM is working. Firstly, the lumped mass parameter model of the gripper cylinder is established considering the influence of the variable stiffness at the rock interface, the equivalent stiffness of the oil, the seals, and the copper guide sleeve. The dynamic performance of the gripper cylinder is investigated to provide basis for its health condition evaluation. Then, the EMD method is applied to identify the characteristic frequencies of the gripper cylinder for fault diagnosis and a field test is used to verify the accuracy of the EMD method for detection of the characteristic frequencies. Furthermore, the contact stiff- ness at the interface between the barrel and the rod is calculated with Hertz theory and the relationship between the natural frequency and the stiffness varying with the health condition of the cylinder is simulated based on the dynamic model. The simulation shows that the character- istic frequencies decrease with the increasing clearance between the barrel and the rod, thus the defects could be indicated by monitoring the natural frequency. Finally, a health condition management system of the gripper cylin- der based on the vibration signal and the EMD method is established, which could ensure the safety of TBM.

Hidden feature extraction for unstructured agricultural environment based on supervised kernel locally linear embedding modeling

An online hidden feature extraction algorithm is proposed for unknown and unstructured agricultural environments based on a supervised kernel locally linear embedding (SKLLE) algorithm. Firstly, an online obtaining method for scene training samples is given to obtain original feature data. Secondly, Bayesian estimation of the a posteriori probability of a cluster center is performed. Thirdly, nonlinear kernel mapping function construction is employed to map the original feature data to hyper-high dimensional kernel space. Fourthly, the automatic deter mination of hidden feature dimensions is performed using a local manifold learning algorithm. Then, a low-level manifold computation in hidden space is completed. Finally, long-range scene perception is realized using a 1-NN classifier. Experiments are conducted to show the effectiveness and the influence of parameter selection for the proposed algorithm. The kernel principal component analysis (KPCA), locally linear embedding (LLE), and supervised locally linear embedding (SLLE) methods are compared under the same experimental unstructured agricultural environment scene. Test results show that the proposed algorithm is more suitable for unstructured agricultural environments than other existing methods, and that the computational load is significantly reduced.

Intrinsic feature extraction using discriminant diffusion mapping analysis for automated tool wear evaluation

We present a method of discriminant diffusion maps analysis(DDMA) for evaluating tool wear during milling processes. As a dimensionality reduction technique, the DDMA method is used to fuse and reduce the original features extracted from both the time and frequency domains, by preserving the diffusion distances within the intrinsic feature space and coupling the features to a discriminant kernel to refine the information from the high-dimensional feature space. The proposed DDMA method consists of three main steps:(1) signal processing and feature extraction;(2) intrinsic dimensionality estimation;(3) feature fusion implementation through feature space mapping with diffusion distance preservation. DDMA has been applied to current signals measured from the spindle in a machine center during a milling experiment to evaluate the tool wear status. Compared with the popular principle component analysis method, DDMA can better preserve the useful intrinsic information related to tool wear status. Thus, two important aspects are highlighted in this study: the benefits of the significantly lower dimension of the intrinsic features that are sensitive to tool wear, and the convenient availability of current signals in most industrial machine centers.