Data Mining for Fault Diagnosis and Machine Learning for Rotating Machinery

Data mining is used not only for database analyses, but also for machine learning. The data mining technique described in this paper was used for steam turbine fault diagnostics based on continuous data measurements. The classification rules are based on standardized vibration frequency data for steam turbines and field experts’ analyses of turbine vibration problems. The expert knowledge enables the steam turbine fault diagnosis system to be more powerful and accurate. The system can identify twenty types of standard steam turbine faults. The system was developed using 2000 simulated data sets. The data mining methods were then used to identify 20 explicit rules for the turbine faults. The method was also used with actual power plant data to successfully diagnose real faults. The results indicate that data mining can be effectively applied to diagnosis of rotating machinery by giving useful rules to interpret the data.