ADVANCED VIBRATION PROCESSING TECHNIQUES FOR CONDITION MONITORING AND QUALITY CONTROL IN I.C. ENGINES AND HARVESTING MACHINES

The topic of this thesis is the development and the implementation of advanced vibration processing techniques for machine condition monitoring and diagnostics with two fields of applications: the quality control of I.C. engines by means of cold tests, and the monitoring and control of harvesting processes. The cold test, i.e. the final test after the assembly line and before shipping the engine to the customer, consists of the final quality control of the engine in a non-combustion state. Techniques for engine condition monitoring based on the analysis of vibration signals are widely used. However, these techniques are often applied to engine tests in firing conditions. This thesis addresses the use of several signal processing tools as a means for the monitoring and the diagnosis of assembly faults through the cold test technology. Firstly, an approach based on the use of Symmetrized Dot Patterns for the visual characterization of vibration signatures is proposed in order to obtain reliable thresholds for the pass/fail decision after the cold test. Secondly, the fault identification is discussed on the basis of the cyclostationary modelling of the signals. The first-order cyclostationarity is exploited through the analysis of the Time Synchronous Average (TSA). Subsequently, secondorder cyclostationarity is analysed by means of the Wigner-Ville Distribution (WVD), Wigner-Ville Spectrum (WVS) and Mean Instantaneous Power (MIP). Moreover, Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) is presented and compared with the WVD and WVS. The choice of different wavelet functions and some methods for the CWT map optimization (i.e. purification method and the average across the scale vi method (TDAS)) are also considered. Moreover, the capabilities of the Instantaneous Angular Speed (IAS) in detecting assembly faults have been tested. It is worth noting that the cyclostationary and time-frequency technique capabilities have been verified for both simulated and real signals. The experimental results indicate that the image correlation of Symmetrised Dot Patterns is a good solution that can be used in the cold test technology in order to increase its efficiency and fault detection capability. Moreover, it will be proved that the first order cyclostationary analysis is able to identify the presence of assembly faults but it is not appropriate to localise the faults. The second order analysis overcomes this problem indicating the angular position of the mechanical part affected by the fault. This is achieved by means of a correlation between the results obtained from the cyclostationarity analysis and the angular position of the mechanical events. Concerning the time-frequency analysis, the WVS as well as the CWT, using both Morlet mother wavelet and TDAS method can be considered good tools to characterise the transients due to the fault events in the timefrequency domain. Thanks to this research study it is possible to understand which of the above-mentioned techniques is effective for an easy and fast quality control and for the diagnosis of the considered assembly faults. Moreover, the limits and drawbacks of both monitoring and diagnostic procedures are shown. The originality of the first part of the research mainly concerns the use of vibration measurements for the quality control of engines at the end of the assembly line while the greater part of methods used for cold test applications focuses on pressure and torque measurements. The second part of this thesis concerns the analysis of relationships between the harvesting process parameters relative to a nonconventional harvesting machine and its vibration response. Common and uncommon features extracted from a segmentation analysis have been correlated with the harvesting process efficiency in order to define the optimal monitoring feature subset. Moreover, the Discrete Wavelet Transform method is performed in order to find the vii frequency range mostly characterised by impulsive components. In addition, some outlines obtained through the vibro-acoustic analysis performed in the angular domain are also given. Two different indoor and outdoor test rigs have been built to test the machine under different setting conditions in order to evaluate their influence over the vibration response of the threshing unit. The test results are used to identify how the vibration generation is linked to the crop distribution during the threshing process. Good correlations have been obtained by analysing the concave middle radial signal and by calculating the relationships that exist between some time domain features and the efficiency parameters. These features can be assumed as good indexes in explaining the crop distribution between the rotor and the concave and, consequently, the efficiency of the process. Moreover, it will be shown that the vibroacoustic features selected are well-connected to the different sources of the concave excitation. The main original contribution of this second part concerns the use of the vibration signal as an effective way to monitor the harvesting process. It can also be considered as a proper quality control indicator for the user during field operations.