1. Introduction
The time-varying characteristics of parameters exist in a large number of engineering structural systems, for example, the time-varying stiffness characteristics of gear transmission systems, with a change in meshing position and degree during the meshing process, along with the time-varying characteristics of the mass and stiffness of the system during the rotation of an asymmetric or cracked rotor system. The time-varying nature of the structural parameters may cause significant changes in the dynamics of the structure and may even affect the stability of system operation. Therefore, analysis of the effects of time-varying system vibration characteristics and time-varying parameters has received extensive research attention.
Traditional research on the identification of the dynamical parameters of time-invariant systems has matured [
1] (pp. 119–130), while the corresponding research on time-varying systems is more difficult and remains at the forefront of research in the field of mechanics [
2] (pp. 171–180). Since the 1950s, scholars have conducted systematic theoretical research on periodic knowledge-variable systems [
3]; this preliminary research has mainly used differential higher-order equations to describe and solve the stability of periodic time-invariant systems. For example, P. L. Chow and K. L. Chiou [
4] (pp. 315–326) proposed stability criteria for periodic solutions in nonlinear systems. With the development of control theory and electronic computers, the state space method, which is more applicable to numerical computation, has received considerable attention from scholars. The state space method started to take off in the late 1980s [
5,
6] (pp. 165–169, pp. 143–157) and was gradually applied to the identification of time-varying structural parameters. First, Tasker [
7] (pp. 797–808) et al. verified that the state space method shows good identification speed and broad engineering application prospects by estimating the online modal parameters of 4 × 4 truss structures, then Liu [
8] (pp. 149–167) extended the modal concept of linear time-varying systems and proposed pseudo-modal parameters based on discrete time-state space models and applied them to the parameter identification of linear time-varying systems. To further speed up the state space method for the parameter identification of time-varying systems, James Durbin [
9] proposed a time series analysis of state space models, then Poinot and Trigeassou [
10] (pp. 2319–2333) proposed an approximate fractional integrator with recursive poles and zeros, which, in turn, derives the integer state space equations for fractional systems; however, the matrices are still large, leading to computational complexity. In an example analysis of a periodic time-varying system, Shen [
11] (pp. 82–87) analyzed the response state of a tie-rod rotor system with transient periodic motion in the mid-to-high speed range, considering the inter-disk contact effects.
Scholars have dedicated a great deal of research to solving state space equations, among which the selection of the impulse function as the expansion function can greatly reduce the computational effort of solving state space equations [
12]. As early as the 1960s, R.E. Kalman [
13] (pp. 152–159) pointed out that the determination of linear dynamic systems can be achieved via the impulse response matrix. Leang-San Shieh [
14] (pp. 383–392) first proposed to solve the state space equations via the block-pulse function, which has the properties of orthogonality and irrelevance and can reduce the computational demands of the numerical calculation of state space equations further. Murali Bosukonda [
15] proposed an algebraic method for approximating the simplified state space with fractional equivalence, based on block-pulse functions, which greatly simplifies the computation in low-order linear systems; however, as the frequency in linear systems increases, the number of primary functions required for parameter identification increases and the problem of tight dynamical properties at high frequencies cannot be solved. For the use of the block-pulse function in parameter identification, Bouafoura [
16] proposed a fractional-equivalent approximation to simplify the state space algebraic method, which greatly simplifies the calculation in low-order linear systems; however, with the increase in frequency in linear systems, the number of primary functions required for parameter identification increases, and the problem of tight dynamical properties at high frequencies cannot be solved. In the field of the engineering applications of block-pulse functions for parameter identification, Yaser Hosseini [
17] applied the block-pulse function to the dynamic parameter monitoring of buildings, based on continuous-time state space estimation, and proposed that the numerical calculation method of block-pulse functions has the advantages of low computational cost and high accuracy. At present, in the field of control engineering and system engineering, the research applications of block-pulse functions have become increasingly mature [
17,
18,
19,
20]. In the field of rotating machinery, there are few studies about the use of the block-pulse function for parameter identification. Liao [
21] (pp. 71–76) proposed a method to identify rotor unevenness, based on nonlinear support parameters. Li [
22] used the mode synthesis method to analyze the geometric disorder of blade disc vibration, considering pre-stress. The use of a block-pulse function for rotating machinery in vibration parameter identification needs further research.
In this paper, we focus on the parameter identification of periodic time-varying systems in the field of mechanical vibration. First, we use the block-pulse function to expand the state-space equations of the system, then we obtain the recurrence formula for the parameter identification of time-varying systems, based on the irrelevance and orthogonality characteristics of the block-pulse function, which truncates the vibration data periodically and quickly solves the state-space equations. Subsequently, the recurrence formula is used to solve the three-degrees-of-freedom periodic time-varying system and cracked rotor experimental system, respectively.
3. Parameter Identification of Multi-Degree of a Freedom Simulation System
As shown in
Figure 1, a three-degree-of-freedom spring-mass-damping time-varying structure with mass blocks, where the mass of blocks (
m1 = 1 kg,
m2 = 2 kg and
m3 = 1 kg) do not vary with time. Stiffness can be shown as
,
,
, and
, stiffness varying frequency,
, and initial phase
. The time-varying stiffness is
. To highlight the study of stiffness variation, damping is assumed to be
and the external excitation force is assumed to be
.
We assume that the initial situation is
= 0.001 m,
= 0 m/s,
= 0 m/s,
= 0 m/s,
= 0.005 m, and
= 0 m/s. The dynamic response of the system is solved using the Newmark-
method, taking the step size as
; the displacement response is shown in
Figure 2 and the velocity response is shown in
Figure 3.
Spectral analysis of the displacement signal is shown in
Figure 4.
It can be seen that the free response of the vibration system has such frequency components as , , , , and so on, in accordance with Equation (29), where is the first-order intrinsic frequency, is the second-order intrinsic frequency, is the third-order intrinsic frequency, and is the parametric excitation frequency. It has been verified that the parametric vibration system has multi-frequency characteristics.
In this paper, a total of six sets of response calculations under different initial states (and linearly independent) are carried out; the parameter identification program is prepared using the MATLAB language, according to the recursive Equations (25)–(28), and the results and relative errors of each stiffness identification are shown as
(‘
’ refers to the identification stiffness) in
Figure 5,
Figure 6,
Figure 7 and
Figure 8.
From
Figure 5 and
Figure 6, it can be seen that the parameter identification method proposed in this paper can better identify the non-time-varying stiffness value of the system, and the error is small compared with the preset value.
From
Figure 7 and
Figure 8, it can be seen that the parameter identification method proposed in this paper also identifies the time-varying stiffness value of
well. It can also be seen from the right-hand panel of
Figure 7 that the stiffness
consists of two parts: one is the constant value (zero frequency)
, and the other is the frequency
, while the amplitude is
and its angular frequency
is consistent with the given
. As can be seen from
Figure 8, the relative error in the stiffness identification results is small, with a maximum value of less than 0.05%.
To study the influence of different signal-to-noise ratios and calculation steps on the accuracy of recognition results, the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of recognition results is defined as:
where
and
are the stiffness identification value and the theoretical value at moment
i·
h, respectively.
N presents the number of samples.
We then add noise interference to the simulation signal. In the step size of
, the simulation results and relative errors of time-varying stiffness
under different signal-to-noise ratios are shown in
Figure 9,
Figure 10 and
Figure 11.
The effects of signal-to-noise ratio and calculation step size on the recognition accuracy (MAPE) are shown in
Table 1 and
Table 2, respectively.
From
Table 1 and
Table 2, it can be seen that the signal noise has a greater impact on the recognition result, so the signal-to-noise ratio should be improved as much as possible in the signal acquisition process; the smaller the calculation step, the better the recognition effect. However, the corresponding calculation volume also increases, so the appropriate step length should be selected according to the actual requirements.
For the Newmark-
method used in solving the dynamic response of the system, the calculation step size affects the accuracy of the calculation, as can be seen in
Figure 4 in line 186. The highest order intrinsic frequency of the three-degree-of-freedom system in this paper is
; according to the sampling theorem, the sampling frequency should be greater than the signal analysis frequency by more than two times so as not to occur in the mixing. In order to maintain the accuracy of the signal amplitude, sampling frequency should be much greater than
. The sampling frequency selected in this paper is
, that is,
. At the same time, according to the results of
Table 2, in line 230, it can be seen that when
, the accuracy is poor; when we take
, the accuracy has met the requirements, while if we take
, the computational volume is large. Taking this into account, we chose
.
In order to verify the higher accuracy of the proposed method, compared with the existing methods, a cross-sectional comparison of the identification results of the periodic time-varying stiffness
is presented in the literature [
26]. The paper presents and discusses the identification accuracy of the state space wavelet method for the parametric time-varying stiffness in the two-degrees-of-freedom simulation example, and shows the identification accuracy of the periodic time-varying stiffness at four signal-to-noise ratios: no noise, 50, 80, and 100, where the variation pattern of the periodic time-varying stiffness
is the same as that of the time-varying stiffness
recognized in this paper. The difference lies in the fact that the simulation example given in the literature has one less degree of freedom than this paper.
In contrast, in the case of noiseless and medium-high signal-to-noise ratios, using the block-pulse function method to identify periodic time-varying stiffness can greatly improve the identification accuracy, and the higher the signal-to-noise ratio, as shown in
Table 3, the higher the accuracy of the identification results; in the absence of noise, the block-pulse function method can also identify the time-varying parameters more accurately.
In order to test the improvement of the parameter identification speed of the block-pulse function method, the parameter identification speed of this method is compared with that of the state space wavelet method and that of the EMD method; the time required to identify the time-varying stiffness sequence in a three-degree-of-freedom system using this method is recorded, while the time required to identify the time-varying stiffness sequence in the same system without noise is recorded with the same arithmetic power.
By identifying the time-varying stiffness of the same three-degree-of-freedom system, as shown in
Table 4, the time required to identify the time-varying stiffness sequence by this method is
, while the time required by the state-space wavelet method is
, the time required by the EMD method is
; the speed of identification by this method is improved by
compared to the state-space wavelet method, and the speed of identification by the EMD method is improved by
.
5. Discussion
(1) The recursive formula for the identification of the periodic time-varying rotor system parameters derived in this paper has the advantages of concise structure, time-saving calculation, and high accuracy.
(2) The signal noise has a certain influence on the recognition result, so the signal-to-noise ratio should be improved as much as possible in the signal acquisition process. In the case of the Newmark-
method used in solving the dynamic response of the system, the calculation step length affects the accuracy of the calculation. According to the sampling theorem, the sampling frequency should be greater than the analysis frequency of the signal by a factor of two or more, in order to avoid the occurrence of mixing. The smaller the calculation step, the better the recognition effect, but the corresponding calculation volume also increases, so an appropriate step size should be selected according to the actual requirements. At the same time, according to the results of
Table 2 in line 230, it can be seen that when
, the accuracy is poor; when we take
, the accuracy has met the requirements, while if we take
, the computational volume is large; taking this into account, we chose
.
(3) By identifying the parameters of the numerical simulation model and the actual periodic time-varying rotor system, the time-varying stiffness parameters can be identified more accurately, thus verifying the correctness and effectiveness of the method. Compared with the state-space wavelet method and with the EMD method, the recognition accuracy of this paper is higher under the conditions of noise-free and high signal-to-noise ratios; the speed of identification by this method is improved by compared to the state-space wavelet method, and the speed of identification by the EMD method is improved by .
(4) This paper provides a new method for the parameter identification and fault diagnosis of engineering machinery structures with periodic time-varying parameters, such as gears and cracked rotors, which has great engineering application value.