Operational Reliability Assessment of Compressor Gearboxes with Normalized Lifting Wavelet Entropy from Condition Monitoring Information

Classical reliability assessment methods have predominantly focused on probability and statistical theories, which are insufficient in assessing the operational reliability of individual mechanical equipment with time-varying characteristics. A new approach to assess machinery operational reliability with normalized lifting wavelet entropy from condition monitoring information is proposed, which is different from classical reliability assessment methods depending on probability and statistics analysis. The machinery vibration signals with time-varying operational characteristics are firstly decomposed and reconstructed by means of a lifting wavelet package transform. The relative energy of every reconstructed signal is computed as an energy percentage of the reconstructed signal in the whole signal energy. Moreover, a normalized lifting wavelet entropy is defined by the relative energy to reveal the machinery operational uncertainty. Finally, operational reliability degree is defined by the quantitative value obtained by the normalized lifting wavelet entropy belonging to the range of [0, 1]. The proposed method is applied in the operational reliability assessment of the gearbox in an oxy-generator compressor to validate the effectiveness. OPEN ACCESS Entropy 2015, 17 3480