A hybrid k-means-GMM machine learning technique for turbomachinery condition monitoring

Abstract

Industrial practise typically applies pre-set original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) limits to turbomachinery online condition monitoring. However, aforementioned technique which considers sensor readings within range as normal state often get overlooked in the developments of degradation process. Thus, turbomachinery application in dire need of a responsive monitoring analysis in order to avoid machine breakdown before leading to a more disastrous event. A feasible machine learning algorithm consists of k-means and Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) is proposed to observe the existence of signal trend or anomaly over machine active period. The aim of the unsupervised k-means is to determine the number of clusters, k according to the total trend detected from the processed dataset. Next, the designated k is input into the supervised GMM algorithm to initialize the number of components. Experiment results showed that the k-means-GMM model set up not only capable of statistically define machine state conditions, but also yield a time-dependent clustering image in reflecting degradation severity, as a mean to achieve predictive maintenance.