Genetic Algorithm training of Elman neural network in motor fault detection

Fault detection safe and reliable methods are crucial in acquiring operation in motor drive systems. Remarkable maintenance costs can also be saved by applying advanced detection techniques to find potential failures. However, conventional motor fault detection approaches often have to work with explicit mathematic models. In addition, most of them are deterministic or non-adaptive, and therefore cannot be used in time-varying cases. In this paper, we propose an Elman neural network-based motor fault detection scheme to address these difficulties. The Elman neural network has the advantageous time series prediction capability because of its memory nodes, as well as local recurrent connections. Motor faults are detected from the variants in the expectation of feature signal prediction error. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) aided training strategy for the Elman neural network is further introduced to improve the approximation accuracy, and achieve better detection performance. Experiments with a practical automobile transmission gearbox with an artificial fault are carried out to verify the effectiveness of our method. Encouraging fault detection results have been obtained without any prior information on the gearbox model.