Fault Detection Based on a Bio-Inspired Vibration Sensor System

A novel vibration sensor based on a bio-inspired nonlinear structure with quasi-zero stiffness characteristic is developed for the real-time measurement of absolute vibration motion. With this bio-inspired vibration sensor, the problems of error accumulation and real-time performance induced by traditional measurement method using accelerometer can be effectively eliminated. In order to construct a comparatively exact model of the bio-inspired vibration sensor, an adaptive compensation method is applied to the estimation of the structure parameter. Through taking full advantage of the bio-inspired vibration sensor in real-time measurement of absolute vibration motion, a model-based fault detection algorithm is proposed to cope with the real-time detection problem of weak fault with fast time-varying characteristic which cannot be exactly identified by existing frequency-based and wavelet-based fault detection methods. Theoretical analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the fault detection algorithm based on this bio-inspired vibration sensor is effective and efficient, compared with the existing ones and thus has a great potential in many real practical applications.