Support vector machine and K-nearest neighbour for unbalanced fault detection

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop an appropriate approach for detecting unbalanced fault in rotating machines using KNN and SVM classifiers.

Design/methodology/approach

To fulfil this goal, a fault diagnosis approach based on signal processing, feature extraction and fault classification, was used. Vibration signals were acquired from a designed experimental system with three conditions, namely, no load, balanced load and unbalanced load. FFT technique was applied to transform the vibration signals from time-domain into frequency-domain. In total, 29 feature parameters were extracted from FFT amplitude of the signals. SVM and KNN were employed to classify the three different conditions. The performances of the two classifiers were obtained under different values of their parameter.

Findings

The experimental results show the potential application of SVM for machine fault diagnosis.

Practical implications

The results demonstrate that the proposed approach can be used effectively for detecting unbalanced condition in rotating machines.

Originality/value

In this paper, an intelligent approach for unbalanced fault detection was proposed based on supervised learning method. Also, a performance comparison was made between KNN and SVM in fault classification. In addition, this approach gave a high level of classification accuracy. The proposed intelligent approach can be used for other mechanical faults.

Citation

Moosavian, A., Ahmadi, H., Sakhaei, B. and Labbafi, R. (2014), "Support vector machine and K-nearest neighbour for unbalanced fault detection", Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 65-75. https://doi.org/10.1108/JQME-04-2012-0016