Hybrid Support Vector Machines-Based Multi-fault Classification

Support Vector Machines (SVM) is a new general machine-learning tool based on structural risk minimization principle. This characteristic is very signific ant for the fault diagnostics when the number of fault samples is limited. Considering that SVM theory is originally designed for a two-class classification, a hybrid SVM scheme is proposed for multi-fault classification of rotating machinery in our paper. Two SVM strategies, 1-v-1 (one versus one) and 1-v-r (one versus rest), are respectively adopted at different classification levels. At the parallel classification level, using 1-v-1 strategy, the fault features extracted by various signal analysis methods are transferred into the multiple parallel SVM and the local classification results are obtained. At the serial classification level, these local results values are fused by one serial SVM based on 1-v-r strategy. The hybrid SVM scheme introduced in our paper not only generalizes the performance of signal binary SVMs but improves the precision and reliability of the fault classification results. The actually testing results show the availability suitability of this new method. © 2007 The Journal of China University of Mining & Technology.