Prediction of wear trend of engines via on-line wear debris monitoring

On-line wear debris monitoring is a useful technology for real-time machine wear condition monitoring but needs further development. This study, based on previous developments of an on-line visual ferrograph (OLVF), focused on (i) data reconstruction for extracting representative and reliable wear condition related characteristics, and (ii) development of an improved model for on-line wear prediction. Wear monitoring of a diesel engine was performed using this on-line wear debris monitoring system. Experimental results and comparisons between the improved relevance vector machine (RVM) model and other models show that the improved RVM model gives an earlier warning and enhances the prediction accuracy.