Quality Determination of Hydraulic Pumps with Adaptive Fuzzy Pattern Classifiers to Reduce the Risk for Quality Management

Abstract

Automated production of complex assemblies such as hydraulic pumps also requires reliable detection of defects utilizing functional tests. In principle, this is a classification task in good/bad, which, however, is often not to be made sharply but should provide gradations for detailed error analysis. From this, conclusions can be drawn, for example, about the type or location of the defects, wear, or aging of components in the production chain. A high-dimensional vector of data from static or dynamic measurements including is generally available as the basis for the fault detection model. Modeling such complex nonlinear systems under various load conditions with dynamic test procedures leads to uncertainties that should also be reflected in the diagnostic model. For this, the design of the classification model (the classifier) should be largely automatic during the training phase for time and cost reasons. In addition, online updating under actual operating conditions is also often desired. These challenging goals can be met through the artificial intelligence (AI) methodology of fuzzy pattern classification. This chapter deals with the development of a fuzzy classifier for the application case of the final inspection of hydraulic axial piston pumps. The focus is on the automatic training of the classifier employing a new adaptation procedure and permanently (until termination) evaluates the resp. current classifier using performance measures. Using real experimental data, the procedure and the step-by-step adaptation results for different links between the current classification model and the new data are presented and compared.