This article presents a comprehensive collection of formulas and calculations for hand-crafted feature extraction of condition monitoring signals. The documented features include 123 for the time domain and 46 for the frequency domain. Furthermore, a machine learning-based methodology is presented to evaluate the performance of features in fault classification tasks using seven data sets of different rotating machines. The evaluation methodology involves using seven ranking methods to select the best ten hand-crafted features per method for each database, to be subsequently evaluated by three types of classifiers. This process is applied exhaustively by evaluation groups, combining our databases with an external benchmark. A summary table of the performance results of the classifiers is also presented, including the percentage of classification and the number of features required to achieve that value. Through graphic resources, it has been possible to show the prevalence of certain features over others, how they are associated with the database, and the order of importance assigned by the ranking methods. In the same way, finding which features have the highest appearance percentages for each database in all experiments has been possible. The results suggest that hand-crafted feature extraction is an effective technique with low computational cost and high interpretability for fault identification and diagnosis.

Gearboxes are widely used in industrial processes as mechanical power transmission systems. Then, gearbox failures can affect other parts of the system and produce economic loss. The early detection of the possible failure modes and their severity assessment in such devices is an important field of research. Data-driven approaches usually require an exhaustive development of pipelines including models’ parameter optimization and feature selection. This paper takes advantage of the recent Auto Machine Learning (AutoML) tools to propose proper feature and model selection for three failure modes under different severity levels: broken tooth, pitting and crack. The performance of 64 statistical condition indicators (SCI) extracted from vibration signals under the three failure modes were analyzed by two AutoML systems, namely the H2O Driverless AI platform and TPOT, both of which include feature engineering and feature selection mechanisms. In both cases, the systems converged to different types of decision tree methods, with ensembles of XGBoost models preferred by H2O while TPOT generated different types of stacked models. The models produced by both systems achieved very high, and practically equivalent, performances on all problems. Both AutoML systems converged to pipelines that focus on very similar subsets of features across all problems, indicating that several problems in this domain can be solved by a rather small set of 10 common features, with accuracy up to 90%. This latter result is important in the research of useful feature selection for gearbox fault diagnosis.

Prognostics and Health Management technologies are useful for early fault detection and optimization of reliability in mechanical systems. Reciprocating compressors units are commonly used in industry for gas pressurization and transportation, and the valves in compressors are considered vulnerable parts susceptible to failure. Then, early detection of faults is important for avoiding catastrophic accidents. A feasible approach for fault detection consists in measuring the vibration signal for extracting useful features enabling fault detection and classification. In this research, a test-bed composed by two-stage reciprocating compressor was used for simulating a set of 13 different conditions of combined faults in valves and roller bearings. Three accelerometers were used for collecting the vibration signals for extracting three different types of features. These features were analyzed furthermore by using two random forest models to classifying the different faults. The first set of features was obtained by applying the symbolic dynamics algorithm, which provides the histogram of a set of symbols. This set of symbols was obtained by subdividing a 2D Poincaré plot into angular regions and counting the intersection of the phase trajectories on each of regions. The second type of features corresponds to the complex correlation measure which is calculated as the addition of the areas of triangles belonging to a Poincaré plot. Additionally, a small set of classical statistical features was also used for comparing their classification abilities to the new set of proposed features. The three sets of features enable highly accurate classification of the set of faults when used with random forest classification models. Notably, the ensemble subspace k-Nearest Neighbors algorithm provides classification accuracies higher than 99%.

Railway safety is a matter of importance as a single failure can involve risks associated with economic and human losses. The early fault detection in railway axles and other railway parts represents a broad field of research that is currently under study. In the present work, the problem of the early crack detection in railway axles is addressed through condition-based monitoring, with the evaluation of several condition indicators of vibration signals on time and frequency domains. To achieve this goal, we applied two different approaches: in the first approach, we evaluate only the vibrations signals captured by accelerometers placed along the longitudinal direction and, in the second approach, a data fusion technique at the condition indicator level was conducted, evaluating six accelerometers by merging the indicator conditions according to the sensor placement. In both cases, a total of 54 condition indicators per vibration signal was calculated and selecting the best features by applying the Mean Decrease Accuracy method of Random Forest. Finally, we test the best indicators with a K-Nearest Neighbor classifier. For the data collection, a real bogie test bench has been used to simulate crack faults on the railway axles, and vibration signals from both the left and right sides of the axle were measured. The results not only show the performance of condition indicators in different domains, but also show that the fusion of condition indicators works well together to detect a crack fault in railway axles.