Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838

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Nuclear Engineering and Technology

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Original Article

Research on diagnosis method of centrifugal pump rotor faults based

on IPSO-VMD and RVM
Liang Dong a, *, Zeyu Chen a, Runan Hua b, Siyuan Hu a, Chuanhan Fan a, xingxin Xiao a
a
National Research Center of Pumps, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 212013, Jiangsu, China
b
Wuhan Second Ship Design and Research Institute, Wuhan, 430060, Hubei, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Centrifugal pump is a key part of nuclear power plant systems, and its health status is critical to the
Received 27 May 2022 safety and reliability of nuclear power plants. Therefore, fault diagnosis is required for centrifugal pump.
Received in revised form Traditional fault diagnosis methods have difficulty extracting fault features from nonlinear and non-
6 October 2022
stationary signals, resulting in low diagnostic accuracy. In this paper, a new fault diagnosis method is
Accepted 30 October 2022
Available online 5 November 2022
proposed based on the improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm-based variational modal
decomposition (VMD) and relevance vector machine (RVM). Firstly, a simulation test bench for rotor
faults is built, in which vibration displacement signals of the rotor are also collected by eddy current
Keywords:
Improved particle swarm algorithm
sensors. Then, the improved particle swarm algorithm is used to optimize the VMD to achieve adaptive
Variational modal decomposition decomposition of vibration displacement signals. Meanwhile, a screening criterion based on the mini-
Kullback-Leibler divergence value mum Kullback-Leibler (K-L) divergence value is established to extract the primary intrinsic modal
Relevance vector machine function (IMF) component. Eventually, the factors are obtained from the primary IMF component to form
Centrifugal pump rotor faults a fault feature vector, and fault patterns are recognized using the RVM model. The results show that the
extraction of the fault information and fault diagnosis classification have been improved, and the average
accuracy could reach 97.87%.
© 2022 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the
CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction hidden Markov model (HMM) methods to extract the feature

Centrifugal pumps are one of the indispensable and important
components of nuclear power plants. The safe operation of each
pump plays an important role in the entire unit. Therefore, the
monitoring and fault diagnosis of centrifugal pumps are of great
significance for ensuring the internal operation safety of nuclear
power plants and improving economic benefits [1e5].
Since the vibration displacement signal of the rotor system is a
nonlinear and non-stationary signal, it is not ideal for extracting the
rotor fault features directly from the vibration displacement signal.
So, it is necessary to decompose the vibration displacement signal
first and then extract the rotor fault features. Scholars have made
numerous attempts in this regard. Wang et al. proposed a fault
diagnosis method for rotor systems combining empirical mode
decomposition (EMD), fuzzy entropy and support vector machine
(SVM), which can effectively diagnose rotor faults [6]. Yan et al.
used the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dongliang@ujs.edu.cn (L. Dong).
quantities in the vibration signals, which accurately and effectively
identified the running state of the bearing [7]. Zhao et al. adopted
complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMD) to
decompose rotor fault signals and adopted multi-scale permutation
entropy quantized modal components as input vectors of GK
clustering [8].
Although EMD [9], EEMD [10], CEEMD [11] and other methods
can extract rotor fault features from the vibration displacement
signal to a certain extent to realize the diagnosis of rotor fault,
nevertheless, these methods do not inherently solve the end effect
and mode aliasing problem. Variational Mode Decomposition
(VMD) is an adaptive and non-recursive signal decomposition
method proposed by D. Konstantin. in 2014 [12]. Li et al. success-
fully diagnosed the gearbox fault by combining VMD with the
spectral regression kernel optimization method [13]. Zhao et al.
applied VMD to decompose faulty vibration signals to extract fea-
tures and diagnose rotor misalignment faults in wind turbines [14].
Deng et al. proposed a method based on VMD, principal component
analysis (PCA) and support vector machine (SVM) to diagnose the
early faults of rolling bearings [15].

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.net.2022.10.045
1738-5733/© 2022 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al.
While the VMD can effectively decompose nonlinear and non-
smooth signals, the quality of the decomposed IMF components
is seriously affected by the two pre-set parameters in the VMD. It is
difficult to achieve better results by manually adjusting the pa-
rameters for this problem. Therefore, to make the signal decom-
posed by VMD achieve the best effect, how to find the best
parameter combination has become a research hotspot of domestic
and foreign scholars. Yan et al. successfully searched for the best
parameter combination of the VMD by adopting the crow search
algorithm (CSA) and taking the minimum envelope entropy as the
fitness function [16]. Ma proposed the method based on grid search
to optimize VMD parameters and suppressed the end-point effect
by the support vector machine (SVM) regression method [17]. He
et al. used the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) to optimize VMD,
which successfully decomposed the vibration signals of rolling
bearings and gearboxes [18]. In addition, some scholars optimize
the parameters in the VMD algorithm through other optimization
algorithms such as the ant colony optimization algorithm (ACO)
and grasshopper optimization algorithm (GOA). So, it is necessary
for VMD to achieve a good decomposition effect by choosing an
optimization algorithm with strong search ability and fast conver-
gence speed and establishing a proper fitness function.
In this paper, a new fault diagnosis method for a horizontal
centrifugal pump is established by the improved particle swarm
optimization (IPSO), variational modal decomposition (VMD), the
K-L divergence value, and the relevance vector machine (RVM). The
main contributions are as follows:
1. The improved Tent map, adaptive inertia weight, and adaptive
learning factor are used to improve the optimal performance of
the PSO.
2. The Minimum value of permutation entropy of IMF components
is taken as the target of the IPSO algorithm, which realizes the
adaptive decomposition of vibration displacement signal by
VMD. The K-L divergence value is used to extract the principal
IMF component. The method based on IPSO-VMD and RVM is
verified by experiments to accurately and stably identify the
rotor faults of the horizontal centrifugal pump.
2. Experimental design and data collection
A test bench for simulating the rotor faults of the horizontal
centrifugal pump is built, shown in Fig. 1, including variable speed
drive motor, horizontal centrifugal pump, coupling, eddy current
sensors, pressure sensors, pressure pulsation sensors and flow sen-
sors. The basic parameters of the horizontal centrifugal pump unit
are shown in Table 1, and the experimental scheme is shown in
Table 2. In this experiment, the gaskets are added to the coupling to
simulate the rotor imbalance fault, and the weight of the gaskets is
weighed by an electronic scale to determine the rotor's imbalance
degree. The rotor misalignment fault was simulated by moving the
position of the motor terminal, and the degree of rotor parallel
misalignment is measured by a dial indicator. The rotational speed of
the centrifugal pump is maintained at 2900 r/min, and the value of
the flow rate is set to 10.6 m3/h. The sampling frequency is 25600 Hz,
and the sampling time is 1 s. The vibration displacement signals of
the rotor system are collected by two mutually vertical eddy current
sensors and adjusted and amplified by the integrated signal regu-
lator. The digital signals obtained through digital-analog conversion
are input into a data acquisition card. The data acquisition software
developed by LABVIEW is used to display and store the signals. The
vibration displacement signals of rotor imbalance fault, rotor
misalignment fault and normal operation are collected, and each
fault type includes 60 samples, 25600 points per sample. The specific
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Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838
types and parameters of the eddy current sensor are shown in
Table 3. The time-domain waveforms of the vibration displacement
signals under the three working conditions are shown in Fig. 2.
3. Method and process for fault diagnosis
3.1. Improvement of particle swarm optimization algorithm
The PSO algorithm is derived from the study of predatory
behavior in birds. In the PSO algorithm, the solution of each opti-
mization problem is abstracted as a particle with mass and volume,
the basic idea of which is to identify the optimal solution to a
problem by sharing information among individuals and groups
[19]. Supposing that there are N particles in a D-dimensional target
search space, which form a particle swarm, where the position of
the ith particle is represented as Xi ¼ (xi1, xi2, …, xiD). The flight
speed of the ith particle is recorded as Vid¼(vi1, vi2, …, viD), and the
currently searched optimal position of the particle is called the
individual optimal value, denoted as Pbest ¼ (Pi1, Pi2, …, PiD). The
optimal position searched so far by the entire population of parti-
cles is called the population optimum value, denoted as gbest ¼ (pg1,
pg2, …, pgD). After obtaining the individual as well as collective
optimal values, the particle updates its velocity and position ac-
cording to formula (1) and formula (2).


yid ¼ u  yid þ c1 r1 ðpid  xid Þ þ c2 r2 pgd  xid (1)
xid ¼ xid þ vid (2)
Where, i is the particle number; c1 is the individual learning factor;
c2 is the group learning factor; r1 and r2 are the random numbers
between 0 and 1; d is dimension number of the particle; xid is the
position of particle i in dth dimension; vid is the flight speed of
particle i in dth dimension; Pid represents the historical optimal
position of particle i in dth dimension; Pgd is the historical optimal
position of the population in the dth dimension.
Even though the PSO algorithm has many advantages, such as
simplicity, fast search speed, and few setting parameters, it has
many disadvantages. For instance, it is easy to fall into local opti-
mum regions, and it has slow convergence speeds and low
convergence accuracy. Due to this, this paper proposes a new par-
ticle swarm algorithm, which is mainly improved from the
following perspectives:
1. To improve the quality of the particles in the population after
initialization, the uniformity, regularity, ergodicity, and other fea-
tures of the improved Tent map are used to initialize the particles in
the population, which not only improves the diversity of the pop-
ulation after initialization, but also help the particles to escape the
local optimal value, as well as improve both the local and global
search abilities of the particle swarm algorithm. The formula of the
improved Tent map is as follows [20]:

2ðXi þ aÞ; 0  Xi < 0:5
Xiþ1 ¼ (3)
2ð1  Xi  bÞ; 0:5  Xi  1
Where, i is the particle number; a and b are random numbers be-
tween 0 and 0.1; when Xiþ1 > 1, the return value is 1; and when
Xiþ1 < 0, the return value is 0.
2. To balance the global search ability and local search ability of
particle swarm optimization. This research proposes a method of
adaptive inertia weight and adaptive learning factor. The adaptive
inertia weight w, individual learning factor c1, and group learning
factor c2 in formula (1) can be adjusted adaptively. The specific
improvement formula is as follows [21]:
L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al. Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838

Fig. 1. The fault simulation test bench for the rotor of the horizontal centrifugal pump.

Table 1 Table 3
Basic parameters of the horizontal centrifugal pump unit. Models and parameters of eddy current sensor.

Basic parameters Value Type Sensing range Capability of sampling Precision

Diameter of inlet pipe (mm) 50 LD980-Y 0.5 mme2.5 mm 30 kHz 0.01%

Diameter of outlet pipe (mm) 32
Rated speed (r/min) 2900
Rated flow (m3/h) 10.6
Rated lift (m) 26
 
Rated power (Kw) 1.78
Rated efficiency (%) 43
iter
n


NPSH (m) 1.9 c1 ¼ clup  l  1  e  clup  c1low (5)

(  
2:5iter
0:85  e n ; iter  ε
iter 

w¼
n
(4) c2 ¼ c2up þ l  1  e  c2up  c2low (6)
d1  sinð iter  d2  pÞ þ d3 ; iter > ε
Where, d1, d2, and d3 are constants; ε is the specified number of

Table 2
Fault simulation test scheme.

Fault Type Degree of fault simulation Rotational speed (r/min) Flow rate (m3/h)

Normal state None 2900 10.6

Rotor imbalance Degree of rotor imbalance: 2.0 g
Rotor misalignment Degree of parallel misalignment of rotors: 30 silk

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L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al. Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838

Fig. 2. The time-domain waveforms of the vibration displacement signals collected for the three working conditions.

iterations; iter is the current number of iterations; n is the

maximum number of iterations; c1up, c1low are the upper and lower
limits of individual learning factors; c2up, c2low are the upper and
lower limits of group learning factors; l is a random number be-
tween 0 and 1.
So as to verify the performance of the IPSO, the four classic test
functions are selected from the CEC test functions to test the
convergence speed and convergence accuracy of IPSO and PSO. The
relevant parameters of IPSO and PSO are set as follows: the initial
particle swarm size N ¼ 80, the maximum number of iterations
n ¼ 300, the specified number of iterations ε ¼ 200, the upper limit
of particle flight speed Vmax ¼ 2, and the lower limit Vmin ¼ 2, the
individual learning factor upper limit c1up ¼ 2.5, and the lower limit
c1low ¼ 0.5, the upper limit of group learning factor c2up ¼ 2.5, and
the lower limit c2low ¼ 0.8, the constant d1 ¼ 0.1, the constant
d2 ¼ 0.05, the constant d3 ¼ 0.16. The function curve of the adaptive
inertia weight w is shown in Fig. 3. The expressions of four test
functions are shown in Table 4. The test results of the IPSO and PSO
are shown in Fig. 4.
When comparing the iterative curves of PSO and IPSO within
300 iterations, it has been found that the IPSO has a faster
convergence speed and higher convergence accuracy in solving Fig. 3. The function curve of the adaptive inertia weight w.
optimization problems of complex functions and is less likely to fall
into local optimal solutions. Since the parameter optimization
decompositions K and the penalty factor a when decomposing the
problem of variational modal decomposition belongs to a multi-
signal, the IPSO is used to optimize VMD. In this method, the VMD
parameter optimization problem, it is very important to adopt
is used to decompose the original signal into several IMF compo-
the IPSO with easy convergence and strong adaptability to carry out
nents. Then, the permutation entropy value of each IMF component
the follow-up works.
is calculated, which is selected as the target value of the IPSO fitness
function. In the long run, by continuous iterative optimization of
3.2. IPSO-VMD the IPSO, the optimal combination of the number of K and a is
obtained [23]. The principle of permutation entropy is shown as
VMD is a non-recursive and adaptive signal decomposition follows. The flow chart for specific optimization is shown in Fig. 5.
method based on Wiener filtering, which has good frequency di-
vision characteristics. It reduces the non-stationarity of time series 1. A set of time series x(i), i ¼ 1, 2, 3, …, N is spatially reconstructed
with high complexity to obtain relatively stationary subsequences to obtain the matrix as shown in formula (7).
with different frequency scales [22]. It can adaptable match a given
multi-component signal to the optimal center frequency and xð1Þ xð1 þ tÞ / xð1 þ ðn  1ÞtÞ
adequate bandwidth of each mode through an iterative method in 2 3
the frequency domain. So, a multi-component signal can be « « «
6 7
decomposed into multiple AM-FM components. Four parameters 6 7
6 xðjÞ xðj þ tÞ / xðj þ ðn  1ÞtÞ 7 (7)
must be set before the VMD decomposes the signal: the number of 4 5
modal decompositions K, the penalty factor a, the noise tolerance t, « « «
and the convergence error ε. If the parameters are improperly xðZÞ xðZ þ tÞ / xðZ þ ðn  1ÞtÞ
selected, it will cause phenomena of under decomposition and over
decomposition, which will seriously affect the decomposition effect where, n is the embedding dimension; t is the delay time; Z is the
of the original signal. number of reconstructed components in the reconstruction space;
For the VMD to adaptively determine the number of modal K]N-(n-1)t.
830
L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al. Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838

Table 4
Test functions of CEC.

Expression Dim Range Theoretical extreme

P
f1 ¼ ni¼1 x2i 30 [-100,100] 0
P 2 2 30 [-30,30] 0
f2 ¼ n1 2
i1 ½100 ðxiþ1  xi Þ þðxi  1Þ 
f3 ¼ maxðjxi jÞ 30 [-100,100] 0
P
f4 ¼ ni1 ½x2i  10 cosð2pxi Þ þ10 30 [-5.12,5.12] 0

Fig. 4. Test results for different test functions of IPSO and PSO: (a). f1; (b). f2; (c). f1; (d). f2.

2. Each row in the matrix of formula (7) can be regarded as a

spatial reconstruction component, and the jth reconstruction
component [x(j), x(jþt), …, x(jþ(n-1)t)] in the matrix is sorted in
ascending order to obtain the result as shown in formula (8).

xði þ ðj1  1ÞtÞ  /  xði þ ðjn  1ÞtÞ (8)

3. When it occurs that x(iþ(j1-1)t) ¼ x(iþ(j2-1)t), then it is sorted

according to the magnitude of j values, i.e., when j1 < j2, the
result as shown in formula (9).

xði þ ðj1  1ÞtÞ  xði þ ðj2  1ÞtÞ (9)

4. For each row of the matrix after spatial reconstruction, a row of

symbol sequences S(l)¼(j1、j2、j1) is obtained, where l ¼ 1~k
and k < m!, m! sets of different symbol sequences are accepted
Fig. 5. The flow chart of IPSO-VMD.
under the m-dimensional phase space mapping.
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L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al.
5. The probabilities P1, P2, and Pk of occurrence of the index
sequence at each position are calculated separately, and the
formula for calculating the permutation entropy is shown in
formula (10).
X
k primary IMF component;
Ep ðmÞ ¼  Pj ln Pj (10)
i¼1
where, Pj is the probability of occurrence of the jth symbol; EP is the
permutation entropy value, which represents the complexity of the
original signal. The permutation entropy is large when there is
more noise in the IMF component and fewer characteristic signals.
Otherwise, the permutation entropy is small.
3.3. Kullback-Leibler divergence
K-L divergence is a concept in information theory that is often
referred to as relative entropy. It can measure the difference D
between two distributions. The smaller the D, the smaller the K-L
divergence. When two random distributions are the same, the K-L
divergence is zero. As the difference between two random distri-
butions increases, the K-L divergence also increases. Thus, the IMF
component with small K-L divergence value, namely, the compo-
nent closest to the original signal and containing rich fault feature
information, can be selected as the primary IMF component. The
definition of K-L divergence is shown in the following formula (11)
[24].
X
M  
pðxk Þ
DKL ðpkqÞ ¼ pðxk Þlog (11)
qðxk Þ
i¼1
Where, p(x) is the target distribution; q(x) is the approximate dis-
tribution; M is the length of the distribution; xk is the time domain
sequences; k ¼ 1, 2, 3, …, K, K is the sequence size.
3.4. Relevance vector machine
RVM is a Bayesian learning method with high sparsity proposed
by Tipping in 2000. Compared with the support vector machine
(SVM), the kernel function of RVM does not need conformity to the
mercer's theorem. Therefore, it has a higher generalization ability
and a lower computational complexity [25].
There are four main kernel functions in the RVM model: linear
kernel function, polynomial kernel function, Gaussian radial basis
kernel function, and Sigmoid kernel function. The Gaussian radial
basis kernel function with better generalization performance is
selected in this research. The Gaussian kernel function is shown in
formula (12).
 
kx  zk2
Kðx; zÞ ¼ exp  (12)
2s2
3.5. Fault diagnosis based on the IPSO-VMD and the RVM
The flow chart of the fault diagnosis method of centrifugal pump
rotor based on IPSO-VMD and RVM is shown in Fig. 6. The four main
processes are as follows:
1. The IPSO is used to optimize the VMD, of which the optimal
parameter combinations among normal state, rotor imbalance
fault and rotor misalignment fault are obtained;
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Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838
2. Based on the optimized VMD, the vibration displacement sig-
nals of the rotor system in three different states are decomposed
into several IMF components, respectively;
3. The K-L divergence value for each IMF component is calculated,
and the component with the smallest one is selected as the
4. Waveforms, peaks, margin and pulse factors are four common
dimensionless factors in analysis of signal time domain.
Considering the advantages of waveform and peak index for
good fault stability, pulse and margin factor for strong fault
sensitivity [26]. The primary IMF component's waveform, peak,
margin, and pulse factor in each condition are calculated to form
the fault feature matrix. 75% and 25% of the fault features matrix
are used to train and test the RVM model.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Decomposition of vibration displacement signal based on IPSO-
VMD algorithm
In order to verify the optimization effect of the IPSO on pre-set
parameters of VMD, a group of data samples from rotor imbalance
faults is taken as an example and decomposed by IPSO-VMD and
PSO-VMD. The value range of the modal decomposition number K
is [3,10], and the value range of the quadratic punishment factor a is
[300, 3000]. The relevant operating parameters of the PSO and IPSO
are set as follows: the initial particle swarm size N ¼ 20, the
maximum number of iterations n ¼ 20, the specified number of
iterations ε ¼ 10, the upper limit of particle flight speed Vmax ¼ 2,
and the lower limit Vmin ¼ 2, the individual learning factor upper
limit c1up ¼ 2.5, and the lower limit c1low ¼ 0.5, the upper limit of
group learning factor c2up ¼ 2.5, and the lower limit c2low ¼ 0.8, the
constant d1 ¼ 0.15, the constant d2 ¼ 0.5, the constant d3 ¼ 0.24.
The iterative curve during optimization is shown in Fig. 7,
indicating that the fitness curve of the IPSO algorithm has
converged since the fourth iteration and that the best fitness value
is 0.6881 at this time. After the ninth iteration, the PSO gradually
converges to the best fitness value of 0.6921. Thus, the IPSO algo-
rithm performs better in terms of convergence speed and accuracy
during the optimization process of VMD parameters. The corre-
sponding parameter combination of the VMD is [9, 2860]. Fig. 8
shows that the center frequencies of the IMF components are
relatively dispersed, indicating that the VMD can effectively
decompose the vibration displacement signal.
After determining the optimal combination of parameters for
the VMD, to more intuitively verify the effectiveness of the VMD for
the decomposition of vibration displacement signal. In this paper,
the decomposition results of the two standard algorithms: EMD
and EEMD, are compared with the VMD. The spectrogram of each
IMF component is shown in Fig. 9 by EMD, EEMD, and VMD algo-
rithms. Using the EMD and EEMD algorithms to decompose the
rotor vibration displacement signal, there are different degrees of
modal aliasing between the obtained IMF components. Further-
more, multiple independent bands appear in the IMF1 and IMF2
components, showing the ineffective decomposition effect. In
contrast, the IMF components decomposed by the VMD are inde-
pendent without modal aliasing phenomenon. Therefore, the VMD
is superior to the EMD and EEMD in decomposing vibration
displacement signals.
4.2. Screening criteria for primary IMF component based on K-L
divergence value
The IPSO is used to search for the optimal parameter combina-
tion when the vibration displacement signals of the rotor system
L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al. Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838

Fig. 6. The flow chart of the fault diagnosis method.

Fig. 7. The iterative curve of the IPS0-VMD and PSO-VMD.

Fig. 8. The central frequency of each IMF component after VMD.

833
L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al. Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838

Fig. 9. Spectrograms of IMF components decomposed by different algorithms: (a). EMD; (b). EEMD; (c). VMD.

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L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al.
Table 5
The optimal parameter combination under three different states.
Fault type K a
Normal state 6 2363
Rotor imbalance fault 9 2860
Rotor misalignment fault 4 603
are decomposed using the VMD into three different states: normal
state, rotor imbalance fault, and rotor misalignment fault. The
optimal decomposition number K and penalty factor a of the VMD
in each state are shown in Table 5. The K-L divergence value is
chosen as the screening index to pick out the major IMF compo-
nents, which offer extensive information regarding fault charac-
teristics after VMD decomposition. It can be used to determine the
distance between two random distributions. When the two dis-
tributions are closer, the K-L divergence value tends to be zero.
Otherwise, it increases accordingly. Therefore, the IMF component
with the smallest K-L divergence value can be selected as the pri-
mary IMF one to extract rotor faults' fault features. The results of
the K-L divergence value of each IMF component after VMD
decomposition are shown in Fig. 10.
As depicted in Fig. 10, among the K-L divergence values of each
IMF component of the rotor vibration displacement signal, IMF1 is
the smallest under the normal state, rotor imbalance fault and rotor
misalignment fault. According to the relevant principle of K-L
Fig. 10. The curve of k-L divergence value of IMF components: (a). Normal state; (b). Rotor imbalance; (c). Rotor misalignment.
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Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838
divergence, it can be known that the IMF1 component contains rich
information on rotor faults. Consequently, IMF1 is selected as the
primary IMF component for further analysis. Fig. 11 shows the
spectrograms obtained by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of the IMF1
components in the three working conditions.
Fig. 11(a) clearly shows that when the horizontal centrifugal
pump is running at normal conditions, the main frequency of the
IMF1 component spectrum is 1APF (rotor speed frequency,
48.33 Hz), and the amplitude is 0.0191 mm. As shown in Fig. 11(b),
when the rotor imbalance fault occurs, the main frequency of the
IMF1 component remains dominated by 1APF. However, the
amplitude increases to 0.0643 mm, which is consistent with the
characteristics of the rotor imbalance fault. It can be found in
Fig. 11(c) that the main frequency of the IMF1 component spectrum
is 2APF (96.66 Hz) when the rotor misalignment fault occurs. The
amplitude of the 2APF and 1APF increase to 0.0652 mm and
0.0232 mm, showing consistency with the relevant characteristics
of the rotor misalignment fault. Hence, the fault feature extraction
method combining the VMD and K-L divergence value can accu-
rately and effectively screen and extract the primary IMF compo-
nents in the rotor vibration displacement signal.
4.3. Fault classification based on the RVM model
The four indexes, waveform, peak, margin, and pulse factors, are
extracted from the IMF1 component to establish the four-
L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al. Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838

Fig. 11. The spectrum diagram of the principal IMF components: (a). Normal state; (b). Rotor imbalance; (c). Rotor misalignment.

Table 6
The number of training sets and test sets and the label of the samples.

Fault type Number of training sets Number of test sets Label

Normal state 45 15 0
Rotor imbalance fault 45 15 1
Rotor misalignment fault 45 15 2

Fig. 12. Fault classification of RVM models under different methods: (a). IPSO-VMD-RVM; (b) PSO-VMD-RVM.
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L. Dong, Z. Chen, R. Hua et al.
Fig. 13. Accuracy of RVM models under different methods.
dimensional fault characteristic matrix. Furthermore, based on the
MATLAB software platform, an RVM fault diagnosis model is built to
classify the faults. The data set is randomly divided according to the
proportion of 75% of training and 25% of testing. The division and
the calibration of the data samples are shown in Table 6, in which
labels 0, 1, and 2 represent the normal state, rotor imbalance fault
and rotor misalignment fault, respectively. Fig. 12 shows the iden-
tified situation of the test set by PSO-VMD-RVM and IPSO-VMD-
RVM. The recognition accuracy is shown in Fig. 13.
As shown in Figs. 12 and 13, the IPSO-VMD-RVM can accurately
classify normal state and rotor imbalance fault (both 100% classi-
fication accuracy). Only one test sample of rotor misalignment fault
(93.3% classification accuracy) is identified as a rotor imbalance
fault, and the average classification accuracy is 97.87%. For the PSO-
VMD-RVM, there are 100% classification accuracy in rotor
misalignment faults and 93.3% both in normal state and rotor
imbalance fault, and the average classification accuracy is only
95.56%, which is decreased by 2.31% compared with the IPSO-VMD-
RVM.
5. Conclusions
In order to diagnose the rotor faults of a centrifugal pump, a new
fault diagnosis method of IPSO-VMD and RVM is presented. The
main conclusions are as follows:
1. By introducing three strategies, namely improved Tent map,
adaptive inertia weight and adaptive learning factor, the
convergence speed and accuracy have been effectively
improved, making the global and local search capabilities of the
IPSO algorithm better than the PSO algorithm.
2. Compared with the PSO algorithms, the IPSO algorithm has a
faster convergence speed and higher convergence accuracy in
the process of optimizing the VMD algorithm. It can effectively
search for the best parameter combination of the VMD. The
optimized VMD algorithm, compared to EMD and EEMD, has a
clear advantage in decomposing the rotor vibration displace-
ment signal due to greater anti-modal aliasing.
3. The K-L divergence value can effectively screen out the primary
IMF component from several IMF components. Compared with
PSO-VMD-RVM, the average recognition accuracy of IPSO-VMD-
RVM is increased by 2.31%.
837
Nuclear Engineering and Technology 55 (2023) 827e838
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (No. 51879122, 52279087), Zhenjiang key research
and development plan (GY2017001, GY2018025), the Open
Research Subject of Key Laboratory of Fluid and Power Machinery,
Ministry of Education, Xihua University (szjj2017094, szjj2016068),
-Outstanding Young backbone Teacher, Program Development of
Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), and Jiangsu top six
talent summit project (GDZB-017).
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