Developing innovative numerical/experimental schemes for monitoring and optimization of mechanical systems

在各个行业，生产率的主要竞争对手之一是计划外停机。为了避免任何潜在的运行中断和不必要的停机时间，维修工程师需要采集和处理机器零部件的实时监测数据，以便能够智能地、有计划地做出响应。我的整个研究计划已经解决了这一关切，开发了用于监测和优化的综合通用数值和实验方案，这些方案可以转化为各种工业部门的实用设计工具，以提高生产率、改善质量和避免灾难性故障。这项研究计划的长期目标是为工业提供新的、高效的旋转设备在线监测技术，并促进机械工艺的优化。开发的方法将有助于定制在线监测方法，以便及早发现面向轴承的缺陷和故障运行条件。第二个目标应用将是钢铁制造行业冷却工艺的高级优化，以生产定制钢，降低能源消耗，并实现绿色环境。这项为期5年的研究计划的具体目标是：a)开发旋转机械的在线监测工具，重点是滚子元件轴承和径向轴承；b)开发模拟工具，模拟和优化钢厂轧辊工作台钢板的冷却过程。有故障的轴承可能会导致旋转机械的重大故障，对各种轴承的有效和可靠的健康监测技术的需求继续增长。我们打算利用在线测量和先进的信号处理来生产一种设计工具，适用于早期诊断早期缺陷和估计故障轴承的剩余安全寿命。先进的信号处理和优化技术，如小波包变换(WPT)、模糊逻辑和遗传算法(FGA)，将被研究和改进，以用于结合振动/声学测量、有限元建模和逆分析的状态监测，以检测和识别故障轴承。第二个具体目标是优化钢板的冷却工艺参数，以获得具有新的力学性能的钢。腐烂冷却通常与沸腾换热和沸腾冲击池水在热移动平板上通过多个冲击水射流有关。表面温度测量中的问题导致测量次表面温度(表面下1毫米)，并使用逆热传导(IHC)分析来量化热通量和冷却速度。各种无梯度和随机优化技术，如粒子群方法将被改进并应用于IHC分析，以根据受阻热电偶的读数计算表面温度和热流密度。我们从中试规模的UBC ROT设施测试中获得的广泛实验数据库将用于验证模拟和构建腐烂冷却的现代计算工程模型，以评估钢铁生产中的关键腐烂变量的影响，如钢板温度、钢板速度、喷口形状和喷口间距。

One of the main rivals to productivity in various industries is unplanned downtime. To avoid any potential interruption in operation and unnecessary downtime, maintenance engineers need to acquire and process real-time monitoring data of machine parts to be able to respond in a smart and planned way. My overall research program has addressed this concern with developing combined generic numerical and experimental schemes for monitoring and optimization that can be translated into practical design tools for various industrial sectors to increase productivity, improve quality and avoid catastrophic failures. Long term goal of this research program is to provide industry with novel and efficient online monitoring techniques for rotating equipment and to facilitate the optimization of mechanical processes. The developed method will be aided to customize monitoring online approach for early detection of defects and faulty operating conditions oriented for bearings. A second target application will be advanced optimization of cooling process in steel making industry for producing tailored steels, reducing energy consumption and for green environment. The specific objectives of this 5-year research program are: a) to develop online monitoring tools for rotary machines with emphasize on roller element bearings and journal bearings and b) to develop a simulation tool to model and optimize the cooling process of steel plates on runout tables in steel mills. Faulty bearings may lead to significant failures to rotating machinery and the demand for effective and reliable health monitoring techniques for various bearings continues to grow. We intend to utilize online measurements with advanced signal processing in producing a design tool suitable for early diagnose of incipient defects and estimation of remaining safe life of faulty bearings. Advanced techniques of signal processing and optimization such as wavelet packet transform (WPT) and fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms (FGA) will be investigated and modified for the condition monitoring that combines vibration/acoustic measurements, finite element modeling and inverse analysis for detection and identification of faulty bearing. The second specific objective is concerned with optimizing the process parameters for cooling of steel plates on runout tables (ROT) in order to obtain steels with novel mechanical properties. The cooling in ROT is typically associated with boiling heat transfer and turbulent boiling impingement pool of water on a hot moving plate passing through multiple impinging water jets. Problems in surface temperature measurements led to measuring sub-surface temperature (1 mm below the surface) and to the use of inverse heat conduction (IHC) analysis to quantify heat fluxes and cooling rates. Various gradient-free and stochastic optimization techniques such as particle swarm method will be modified and implement into the IHC analysis to calculate surface temperature and heat flux from readings of the impeded thermocouples. Our extensive experimental database obtained from testing at a pilot scale UBC ROT facility will be used for validation of simulations and constructing a modern computational engineering model for ROT cooling to assess effects of key ROT variables in steel production such as plate temperature, plate velocity, jet configuration, and jet-lines spacing.