Recognition of chatter with neural networks

Chatter deteriorates surface finish, reduces tool life, and damages machine tools. A chatter development prediction procedure is proposed for the cylindrical turning of long slender bars. The procedure uses two synthetically trained neural networks to recognize the harmonic acceleration signals and their frequency, and based on these observations, the future vibration characteristics of the system are estimated. The developed neural networks are capable of identifying 98% of the harmonic signals with over 90% certainty and estimate their frequencies with less than ±5% error from very short data sequences (only 11 sampled points). The accuracy of the neural networks is equivalent to time domain time series method based approaches; however, the proposed procedure can be implemented very quickly by using commercially available neural network hardware and software, and can use the new neural network chips to make the estimations very quickly by using parallel processors. The validity of the chatter prediction procedure is also demonstrated on the experimental data.