A study on the fault diagnosis of roller-shape using frequency analysis of tension signals and artificial neural networks based approach in a web transport system

Rollers in the continuous process systems are ones of key components that determine the quality of web products. The condition of rollers (e.g. eccentricity, runout) should be consistently monitored in order to maintain the process conditions (e.g. tension, edge position) within a required specification. In this paper, a new diagnosis algorithm is suggested to detect the defective rollers based on the frequency analysis of web tension signals. The kernel of this technique is to use the characteristic features (RMS, Peak value, Power spectral density) of tension signals which allow the identification of the faulty rollers and the diagnosis of the degree of fault in the rollers. The characteristic features could be used to train an artificial neural network which could classify roller conditions into three groups (normal, warning, and faulty conditions). The simulation and experimental results showed that the suggested diagnosis algorithm can be successfully used to identify the defective rollers as well as to diagnose the degree of the defect of those rollers.