Applications of chaotic oscillator in machinery fault diagnosis

The forward detecting method is used to detect weak periodic signals by identifying the transformation of the chaotic oscillator from the chaotic state to the large-scale periodic state when a weak external periodic signal is applied. Based on the method above, in this paper, a similar method, which is devised in a reverse way, is presented. The method detects the change of a weak signal by identifying the transformation of the chaotic oscillator from the large-scale periodic state to the chaotic state when a weak external signal is applied. This paper discusses and summarizes the features and scopes of both methods in their application in the field of machinery fault diagnosis. Satisfactory results have been achieved when using both of them in the fault diagnosis of rolling bearings and automobile gearboxes. The paper also presents how to use symbol sequence statistics to automatically identify the state transformation of the chaotic oscillator. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.