Quantitative Evaluation on Valve Leakage of Reciprocating Compressor Using System Characteristic Diagnosis Method

Abstract

High impact and strong noise complicate the response of reciprocating compressor (RC). It requires a complex signal processing method that is a single response-based or excitation-based fault diagnosis method applied to RC valve leakage fault diagnosis. This paper proposes a quantitative diagnosis method of RC valve leakage that is based on system characteristic diagnosis method. First, the current signal of the RC induction motor and the cylinder vibration signal are introduced as the excitation and response signals, the mathematical model of the RC motor current is established, and the influence mechanism of the valve leakage on the RC vibration is analyzed. Subsequently, the ensemble empirical mode decomposition and comb filter are respectively used to extract the fault characteristic information of excitation signal and response signal to obtain the excitation condition indicators (CIs), response CIs, and system CIs. Finally, the support vector machine based on the obtained CIs classified the valve leakage failure patterns of different severity, and a fault diagnoser was constructed for the quantitative diagnosis of valve leakage fault. The results of experiment and application proved that the proposed method could realize the quantitative diagnosis of RC valve leakage fault while using simple signal processing technology.