Affiliation:
1. POSCO (Pohang Iron and Steel Co., Ltd.), Pohang 37859, Republic of Korea
2. Department of Industrial Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of Korea
Abstract
The steel industry is typical process manufacturing, and the quality and cost of the products can be improved by efficient operation of equipment. This paper proposes an efficient diagnosis and monitoring method for the gearbox, which is a key piece of mechanical equipment in steel manufacturing. In particular, an equipment maintenance plan for stable operation is essential. Therefore, equipment monitoring and diagnosis to prevent unplanned plant shutdowns are important to operate the equipment efficiently and economically. Most plant data collected on-site have no precise information about equipment malfunctions. Therefore, it is difficult to directly apply supervised learning algorithms to diagnose and monitor the equipment with the operational data collected. The purpose of this paper is to propose a pseudo-label method to enable supervised learning for equipment data without labels. Pseudo-normal (PN) and pseudo-abnormal (PA) vibration datasets are defined and labeled to apply classification analysis algorithms to unlabeled equipment data. To find an anomalous state in the equipment based on vibration data, the initial PN vibration dataset is compared with a PA vibration dataset collected over time, and the equipment is monitored for potential failure. Continuous wavelet transform (CWT) is applied to the vibration signals collected to obtain an image dataset, which is then entered into a convolutional neural network (an image classifier) to determine classification accuracy and detect equipment abnormalities. As a result of Steps 1 to 4, abnormal signals have already been detected in the dataset, and alarms and warnings have already been generated. The classification accuracy was over 0.95 at d=4, confirming quantitatively that the status of the equipment had changed significantly. In this way, a catastrophic failure can be avoided by performing a detailed equipment inspection in advance. Lastly, a catastrophic failure occurred in Step 9, and the classification accuracy ranged from 0.95 to 1.0. It was possible to prevent secondary equipment damage, such as motors connected to gearboxes, by identifying catastrophic failures promptly. This case study shows that the proposed procedure gives good results in detecting operation abnormalities of key unit equipment. In the conclusion, further promising topics are discussed.
Subject
Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes,Computer Science Applications,Process Chemistry and Technology,General Engineering,Instrumentation,General Materials Science