Vibration monitoring with artificial neural networks

Vibration monitoring of components in nuclear power plants has been used for a number of years. This technique involves the analysis of vibration data coming from vital components of the plant to detect features which reflect the operational state of machinery. The analysis leads to the identification of potential failures and their causes, and makes it possible to perform efficient preventive maintenance. Earlydetection is important because it can decrease the probability of catastrophic failures, reduce forced outgage, maximize utilization of available assets, increase the life of the plant, and reduce maintenance costs. This paper documents our work on the design of a vibration monitoring methodology based on neural network technology. This technology provides an attractive complement to traditional vibration analysis because of the potential of neural network to operate in real-time mode and to handle data which may be distorted or noisy. Our efforts have been concentrated on the analysis and classification of vibration signatures collected from operating machinery. Two neural networks algorithms were used in our project: the Recirculation algorithm for data compression and the Backpropagation algorithm to perform the actual classification of the patterns. Although this project is in the early stages of development it indicates that neural networks may provide a viable methodology for monitoring and diagnostics of vibrating components. Our results to date are very encouraging