Hansoo Lee, Jonggeun Kim, and Sungshin Kim. IJFIS 2017;17:229-34. https://doi.org/10.5391/IJFIS.2017.17.4.229

In manufacturing processes using computerized numerical control (CNC) machines, machine tools are operated repeatedly for a long period for machining hard and difficult-to-machine materials, such as stainless steel. These operating conditions frequently result in tool breakage. The failure of machine tools significantly degrades the product quality and efficiency of the target process. To solve these problems, various studies have been conducted for detecting faults in machine tools. However, the most related studies used only the univariate signal obtained from CNC machines. The fault-detection methods using univariate signals have a limitation in that multivariate models cannot be applied. This can restrict in performance improvement of the fault detection. To address this problem, we employed empirical mode decomposition to construct a multivariate dataset from the univariate signal. Subsequently, auto-associative kernel regression was used to detect faults in the machine tool. To verify the proposed method, we obtained a univariate current signal measured from the machining center in an actual industrial plant. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method successfully detects faults in the actual machine tools.

Machining processes are critical and widely used components in the manufacturing industry because they help to precisely make products and reduce production time. To keep the previous advantages, a machine tool should be installed at the designated place and condition of the machine tool should be maintained appropriately to working environment. In various maintenance methods for keeping the condition of machine tool, condition-based maintenance can be robust to unpredicted accidents and reduce maintenance costs. Tool monitoring and diagnosis are some of the most important components of the condition based maintenance. This paper proposes stacked auto-encoder based CNC machine tool diagnosis using discrete wavelet transform feature extraction to diagnose a machine tool. The diagnosis model, which only uses cutting force data, cannot sufficiently reflects tool condition. Hence, we modeled diagnosis model using features extracted from a cutting force, a current signal, and coefficients of the discrete wavelet transform. The experimental results showed that the model which uses feature data has better performance than the model that uses only cutting force data. The feature based models are lower false negative rate (FNR) and false positive rate. Moreover, squared prediction error using normalized residual vector also reduced FNR because normalization reduces weight bias.

Ground-based weather radar can observe a wide range with a high spatial and temporal resolution. They are beneficial to meteorological research and services by providing valuable information. Recent weather radar data related research has focused on applying machine learning and deep learning to solve complicated problems. It is a well-known fact that an adequate amount of data is a positively necessary condition in machine learning and deep learning. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have received extensive attention for their remarkable data generation capacity, with a fascinating competitive structure having been proposed since. Consequently, a massive number of variants have been proposed; which model is adequate to solve the given problem is an inevitable concern. In this paper, we propose exploring the problem of radar image synthesis and evaluating different GANs with authentic radar observation results. The experimental results showed that the improved Wasserstein GAN is more capable of generating similar radar images while achieving higher structural similarity results.

A weather radar is a frequently used device in remote sensing to identify meteorological phenomena using electromagnetic waves. It can observe atmospheric conditions in a wide area with a remarkably high spatiotemporal resolution, and its observation results are useful to meteorological research and services. Recent research on data analysis using radar data has concentrated on applying machine learning techniques to solve complicated problems, including quality control, quantitative precipitation estimation, and convective storm prediction. Convective storms, which consist of heavy rains and winds, are closely related to real-life and cause significant loss of life and property. This paper proposes a novel approach utilizing the given convective storms’ temporal properties based on machine learning models to predict future locations. The experimental results showed that the machine learning-based prediction models are capable of nowcasting future locations of convective storms with a slight difference.

In modern complex industrial processes, mode changes cause unplanned shutdowns, potentially shortening the lifespan of key equipment and incurring significant maintenance costs. To avoid this problem, a method that can detect the fault of equipment operating in various modes is required. Therefore, we propose a novel fault detection method that uses the k-nearest neighbor normalization-based weight local outlier factor (WLOF). The proposed method performs local normalization using neighbors to consider possible mode changes in the normal data and WLOF is used for fault detection. In contrast to statistical methods, such as principal component analysis (PCA) and independent component analysis (ICA), the local outlier factor (LOF) uses the density of neighbors. However, because LOF is significantly affected by the distance between its neighbors, the weight is multiplied proportionally to the distance between each neighbor to improve the fault detection performance of the LOF. The efficiency of the proposed method was evaluated using a multimode numerical case and a circulating fluidized bed boiler. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms conventional PCA, kernel PCA (KPCA), k-nearest neighbor (kNN), and LOF. In particular, the proposed method improved the detection accuracy by 20% compared with conventional methods. Therefore, the proposed method can be applied to a real process operating in multiple modes.