Modelagem acústica no auxílio ao diagnóstico do funcionamento de motores de usinas termoelétricas.

Abstract

The sound generated by an engine during operation contains information about its conditions, becoming an important source of information to evaluate its status without requiring intervention in equipment. The fault diagnosis of the engine usually is performed by a human, based on his experience in a noisy environment. As the operation of the engine is a periodic procedure, the generated signal follows a well-defined pattern, allowing the evaluation of its operating conditions. On this context, this research deals with modeling the acoustic signal generated by engines in power plants, using techniques from digital signal processing and artificial intelligence, with the purpose of assisting the fault diagnosis, minimizing the human presence at the engine room. The technique applied is based on the study of engines operation and the acoustic signal generated by them, extracting signal representative characteristics in different domains, combined with machine learning methods, to build a multiclassifier to evaluate the engines status. Signals extracted from engines of Borborema Energética S.A. power plant, during the REPARAI Project (REPair over AiR using Artificial Intelligence), ANEEL PD-6471-0002/2012, were used in the experiments. In this research, the method proposed has demonstrated an accuracy rate of nearly 100%. The approach has proved itself to be efficient to fault diagnosis, mainly by not being an invasive method and not requiring human direct contact with the engine.