Abstract: | This paper presents a comparative study of two artificial intelligent systems, namely; Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) and support vector machine (SVM), to classify six fault conditions and the normal (nonfaulty) condition of a centrifugal pump. A hybrid training method for MLP is proposed for this work based on the combination of Back Propagation (BP) and Genetic Algorithm (GA). The two training algorithms are tested and compared separately as well. Features are extracted using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), both approximations, details, and two mother wavelets were used to investigate their effectiveness on feature extraction. GA is also used to optimize the number of hidden layers and neurons of MLP. In this study, the feature extraction, GA‐based hidden layers, neurons selection, training algorithm, and classification performance, based on the strengths and weaknesses of each method, are discussed. From the results obtained, it is observed that the DWT with both MLP‐BP and SVM produces better classification rates and performances. |