Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575

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Engineering Failure Analysis

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engfailanal

The use of artificial neural network (ANN) for modeling the

useful life of the failure assessment in blades of steam turbines
J.A. Rodríguez a,⇑, Y.El. Hamzaoui a,b, J.A. Hernández a, J.C. García a, J.E. Flores c, A.L. Tejeda a
a
Centro de Investigación en Ingeniería y Ciencias Aplicadas (CIICAp), UAEM, Av. Universidad No. 1001, Col Chamilpa, CP 62209 Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
b
Instituto de Ingeniería y Tecnología, Dpto. Ingeniería Eléctrica y Computación, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez (UACJ), Av. Del Charro # 450 Norte,
CP 32310, AP 1594-D Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico
c
Universidad Autónoma del Carmen, Av. 56 # 4 Esq. Concordia, Col. Benito Juárez, Cd. Del Carmen, CP 24180 Campeche, Mexico

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

Article history: Steam turbines have many applications in various industrial sectors and by common expe-
Available online 3 June 2013 rience blade failures are the main origin of operational breakdowns in these machines,
causing great economic loss in turbo machinery industry. The turbines are designed to
Keywords: work in stable conditions of operation. Nevertheless, failure in blades has been present
Artificial neural network after a short time period of work. These failures commonly attributed to resonance stress
Failure analysis of the blades at different stages to certain excitation frequencies. Artificial neural network
Metallurgical examination
(ANN) approach was developed to predict the useful life (UL) of the blades. The configura-
Steam turbine failure
Life cycle assessment in blades
tion 6–3–1 (6 inputs, 3 hidden and 1 output neurons) presented an excellent agreement
(R2 = 0.9912 and RMSE = 0.00022) between experimental and simulated useful life value
considering the hyperbolic tangent sigmoid and linear transfer function in the hidden layer
and output layer. In the following study, the sensitivity analysis was carried out, and
showed, also that all studied input variables (resonance stress, frequency ratio, dynamic
stress, damping, fatigue strength, mean stress) have strong effect on blades steam turbines
in terms of useful life. However, the resonance stress is the most influential parameter with
relative importance of 35.5%, followed by frequency ratio.
The results showed that neural network modeling could effectively predict and simulate
the behavior of life cycles assessment in blades of steam turbines.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

There are a large number of geothermal power plants in Mexico that could be exploited to produce electricity. Process
heat or district heating, according to their task [1]. Electric power is the only product of a condensation power plant and
the main product of a power plant with extraction–condensation turbines, where extraction steam is a by product. Power
plants for process heat generation or combined heat and power stations generate electrical power, steam and district heat
as their main products.
Steam turbines are the mainstay of electricity production worldwide. Today’s competitive electricity generation market
has increased the pressure to keep power generation plant online as and when required.
Energy produced by the boiler is converted to rotational motion of the shaft through the turbines which drive the gen-
erator rotor. The rotor windings with excitation from the exciter create current flow through the three phase generator stator
windings. The stator is connected to the grid through transformers and such.

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +52 1(777) 3297084.

E-mail address: jarr@uaem.mx (J.A. Rodríguez).

1350-6307/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2013.05.002
 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575 563

The generator mass and the grid load coupled through the stator to the rotor create a torsional resistance to the turbine
driven shaft’s rotational motion. Ideally under steady state conditions (constant rotational speed and constant electrical
load) the torque remains essentially constant. Two types of changes in the turbo generator system can cause torsional var-
iation: (a) turbine perturbations and (b) electrical grid perturbations [2].
Many power generation steam turbine generators today are required in service well beyond their intended lifetimes. Dis-
mantling for inspection is expensive, and owners need to consider all relevant information in making the decision. A con-
tributing factor in providing ongoing assurance of acceptable plant condition is the use of condition monitoring. Methods
should be applied according to the modes of degradation expected. Vibration analysis provides much of this assurance,
and has developed such that access to on line vibration data is available to experts who may be located remote from the
plant. Damage to blading should be detectable by vibration analysis, but other problems such as deposition, erosion of blad-
ing and internal steam leakages require performance analysis.
Historically, failures of turbine and generator rotor components due to torsionally induced high cycle vibration fatigue
(retaining rings, shaft cracks, blade root cracks) have been catastrophic and with little warning.
Torsional vibration of rotors, the cause of the fatigue, is generally a sporadic, transient phenomenon provoked by sudden
load changes on the grid and/or inter-harmonic loading which lasts from seconds to minutes [3].
Most of the time these transient events do not overly excite the shaft torsional resonances, but occasionally there is a
coincidence of the transient’s wave form characteristics and torsional resonances resulting in several cycles of high stress.
The accumulation of these cycles may lead to crack initiation and fatigue failure. In addition, modification to the rotor;
i.e., exciter or turbine replacement, shaft modification may change the torsional resonances into a range of susceptibility.
Several power plants have had fatigue cracks on the rotor shaft, in retaining rings and at the turbine blade roots [4].
The failures ranged from small cracks found during inspection to complete failures according to Fig. 1. These failures can
cause severe damage to the turbine and generator and are potential human safety problem. The expense of downtime and
repair may be in order the millions of dollars. The cause of these failures is vibrational fatigue initiated and driven by the
rotor torsional vibration.
On the other hand, there are a lot of variables in the operation of turbomachines as in its design and construction, uncer-
tain up to a certain point, that is to say, these cannot be totally controlled. In general, repeated measurements of mechanical
phenomena generate a lot of input variables each one of them with certain instability in their magnitude that contributes to
increase the probability that some failure might be present before the estimated time.
Excitation forces that changes useful life of a steam turbine are: (1) centrifugal, (2) steam forces and (3) dynamics [5].
However, vibrations stresses like consequence of high vibrations are very difficult to analyze and normally this stresses cause
serious problems in the blades [6]. Vyas and Rao [7] said that useful life of blade is very determined for the stresses dynamics
and statics. The first studies of these loads were realized for Smith [8] and Prohl [9]. They considered 100% of statics and
dynamics loads for obtained stresses in resonance of a blades group, these stresses raise the failure in high cycles of fatigue,
Rao [10]. In transitory state, blades present resonance by the increase of the unsteady steam flow of admission in the stator
and when the turbine rotor accelerates during start up and down of operation causing that the excitation frequencies of the
nozzles or their harmonics of instantaneous way coincide with the natural frequencies of the blades. The stresses can be
higher and problems in cycles down are present. The transitory conditions of operation in start up and down of turbines gen-
erate the stresses of resonance like consequence of acceleration, which can only be controlled by dissipation of the vibration
energy. This dissipation of energy in blades of turbines limits the dynamics stresses presented in resonance conditions in
steady state or transitory state. The damping is inversely proportional to the stresses in resonance. Values of logarithmic dec-

Fig. 1. Different cracks in different zones.

564 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575

rement vary from 0.02 to 0.05 obtained of blades with 12–13% of chromium. Whilst, in the free vibrations the applied exter-
nal loads do not exist and the structure vibrates under effects of the initial conditions.
In form specifies, we obtain the solutions of problem represented in Eq. (1)

½Mfyg þ ½Kfyg ¼ f0g ð1Þ

With a modal analysis for n degree of freedom of a system without constrained, a solution of Eq. (1) is
fygi ¼ f/gi  senðxi t  ai Þ ð2Þ
where {/}i is the ith modal shape or mode with angular frequency x1 and angle of phase ai. So, according to the Eq. (2), we
have

ð½K  x21 ½MÞf/gi ¼ f0g ð3Þ

The Eq. (3) can be written of explicit form like a system of N equations given by the Eq. (4)
2 38 9 8 9
K 11  x2 m1 K 12 K 1N < /1 >
> <0>
= > =
6 7
4 K 21 K 22  x2 m2 K 2N 5 /2 ¼ 0 ð4Þ
>
: ; : >
> > ;
K N1 K N2 K NN  x2 mN /3 0
The analysis modal objective is found xi and /i. The Eq. (3) represents the balance between the rigidity forces and inertia
in a structure. If Eq. (3) is rewritten:

½Kf/gi ¼ x2i ½Mf/gi ð5Þ

A modal form is observed in a static deflection like result of forces in side right of Eq. (5).
Natural frequencies and modal shape were obtained for experimental analysis and these were used for obtained stresses
in resonance [11]. The harmonics analysis was realized and allows knowing the field’s of stresses vibratory within the zone
of the speeds of operation of the turbine. However, the results of analysis of vibrations are used for the construction of the
diagram of Campbell, which shows the natural frequencies of the blades like a function of the speed of the rotor (RPM) [12].
In this work the reliability and useful life of a steam turbine blade of 110 MW in L-0 stage are analyzed using artificial
neural networks (ANNs) were used to predicted the behavior and found a correlation between experimental methods and
ANN’s calculations. The variables, damping, frequency ratio, dynamics stresses, fatigue strength, mean stress and resonances
stresses were used like input variables and cycles of life was output variables.
The calculation of the useful life which play a special role within machine tool analysis of blades of steam turbines process
is in general quite complex. This is caused by the complexity of solving the equations that involve the radiant energy balance,
the spatial distribution of the absorbed radiation, mass transfer, and the mechanisms of a steam turbines. Since the process
depends on several factors, the modeling of these processes involves many problems, exhibit nonlinear behaviors, which are
difficult to describe by linear mathematical model i.e. dealing with a multivariate system. It is evident that these problems
cannot be solved by simple linear multivariate correlation. However, the developments in artificial neural networks make
them possible to be used in complex system modeling.
Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are employed in many areas of industry such as power system of steam turbines, pat-
tern recognition, robotics, controls, medicine, and defense. Their learning and generalization capabilities make them highly
desirable solutions for complex problems. However, they are commonly perceived as black boxes since their behavior is typ-
ically scattered around its elements with little meaning to an observer. Unlike traditional statistical and differential equation
approaches, ANNs are considered to be a powerful data modeling tool as it can capture and implicitly represent complex
relationships with many variables, such as the input/output variables. Basically, the advantages of neural networks are that
they are able to represent both linear and nonlinear relationships and are ingenious to learn the relationships directly from
data used for training the network [13,14].
ANNs do not require the mathematical description of the phenomena involved in the process, and might therefore, prove
useful in simulating and up-scaling complex on blades of steam turbines.
However, it is interesting that the modeling the useful life of the failure assessment in blades steam turbines has been the
subject of numerous review articles. We shall now do the same with deterministic and probabilistic methods, referring only
briefly to the work of: ‘Es-Said et al., 2010’; ‘Azevedo and Sinátora, 2009’; Kubiak et al., 2009(a)’; Kubiak et al., 2009(b)’; ‘Ote-
gui et al., 2009’; ‘Piskoty et al., 2009’; ‘Molent et al., 2008’; ‘Azevedo, 2007’; ‘Gagg and Lewis, 2007’; ‘Macdonald et al., 2007’;
‘Yu and Xu, 2006(a)’; ‘Yu and Xu, 2006(b)’; ‘Clegg and Read, 2004’; ‘Jones, 2004’; ‘Ritchie et al., 2004’; ‘Zerbst et al., 2004’;
‘Clegg and Jones, 2003’; ‘Es-Said et al., 2002’; ‘Tait and Press, 2001’; ‘Es-Said et al., 2000’; ‘Es-Said et al., 1999’; ‘Es-Said el
al., 1998(a)’; ‘Es-Said et al., 1998(b)’; ‘Es-Said et al., 1998(c)’; ‘Es-Said et al., 1998(d)’; ‘Taylor, 1996’; ‘Jones, 1994’; ‘James,
1985’ [15–42].
Nevertheless, in this investigation, we propose to solve the problem of the life cycle assessment in the system of steam
turbine blade using ANNs approach, in addition, the sensitivity analysis study, also was carried out.
The paper is organized as follows, second section will give an overview about design life in the power plant. Third section
pertains about the system description and experimental data. Fourth section will discuss the artificial neural network model,
and then the fifth section is assigned to the results and discussions. Finally, the conclusions on this work are drawn.
 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575 565

2. Design life

An important parameter in the power plant design is the planned lifetime. Conventional and advanced designs are
planned for a lifetime of 200,000 h of operation. Together with the planned operating regime, the design life is mainly deter-
mined by the design of the main components, i.e. the steam turbine and, in particular, the high pressure and superheated
steam pipework and the respective steam generator components and vessels which are subject to regular inspection accord-
ing to law. Base load power stations are mainly subject to creep rupture stresses, while mid-range load power stations are
usually subject to alternating stress. Both types of stress result in consumption of the design life or fatigue of construction
parts. The inspection of the components and the determination by calculation of the expended lifetime are laid down in tech-
nical rules such as the European Standard (or Norm) EN 12952 or formerly the ‘‘German Technical Rules on Steam Gener-
ators’’ (Technische Regeln Dampferzeuger (TRD)). Apart from that, the design will take into account regular scheduled
outages for replacing worn parts or for improvement or retrofitting purposes, without factoring in the availability of such
improved technology. The recording of operational conditions, for instance to identify the actual and the allowable temper-
ature transients, may be reasonable in order to detect and avoid an undue reduction of service life. Based on the knowledge
of the required plant service life, the design should provide that the individual components have accordingly a design life and
should include specified parameters for the operating regime.

Fig. 2. The cracked leading edge of the L-0 blade.

Fig. 3. Discrete models of blade group for the calculation of natural frequencies.
566 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575

3. System description and experimental data

The experimental set up used in this work has been previously described in detail elsewhere [17]. Failures of turbine
blade usually initiate at the zone of high stress concentration which occur in metallurgical discontinuities or where corrosion
is present or even in regions of excessive wear.
During operation of the turbine, the cracks are frequently caused by erosion, corrosion or small imperfections and then
propagate into the fracture. However, these imperfections increase the fatigue stress concentration factor and of course the
stresses themselves.
Turbine inspection revealed that sets of 10 blades failure of the L-0 in low pressure stage of a 110 MW steam turbine were
illustrated within 15 cm from the root. The crack is so big that practically is a fracture observed in a blade root is shown in
Fig. 2.
The L-0 stage had 110 blades of 0.6 m in length with groups of 10 blades. The blades of each group are connected in their
top end by a shroud and two wires as shown in Fig. 3.
In addition, a visual inspection combined with a revision of the turbine operation history were carried out into system
description and experimental data. Furthermore, a turbine flow analysis was also conducted together with verification of
the blade dimensions and tolerances. The natural frequencies and vibration modes analysis of the 10 blades group and
the stress analysis of blades were realized in experimental mode and a finite element program called ANSYS [6,11,43,44].
The experiments were carried out within different initial conditions with at least two replicates. The arrangement was
3  2 with 4 h of information acquisition. Thus, a database of 10,000 samples was obtained.

4. Artificial neural network model

Neural network as a diagrammatic representation of a mathematical equation that receives values (inputs) and gives out
results (outputs). Neurobiology estimates the human brain to consist of one hundred billion nerve cells or neurons. These
communicate via electrical signals that are short-lived impulses or ‘‘spikes’’ in the voltage of the cell wall membrane. Bio-
logical neurons have three principal components: the dendrites, the cell body (soma) and the axon. A neuron’s dendritic tree
is connected to about a thousand neighboring neurons. When one of those neurons fires, a positive or negative charge is re-
ceived by one of the dendrites. The strengths of all the received charges are added together through the processes of spatial
and temporal summation. Spatial summation occurs when several weak signals are converted into a single large one, while
temporal summation converts a rapid series of weak pulses from one source into one large signal. The aggregate input is then
passed to the cell body or soma. If the aggregate input is greater than the axon hillock’s threshold value, then the neuron
fires, and an output signal is transmitted down the axon. The strength of the output is constant, regardless of whether
the input was just above the threshold, or a hundred times as great. The output strength is unaffected by the many divisions
in the axon; it reaches each terminal button with the same intensity it had at the axon hillock. Although ANNs have been
around since the late 1950s, it was not until mid-1980 that algorithms became sophisticated enough for general applications.
Also referred to as connectionist architectures, parallel-distributed processing systems, an ANN is an information-processing
paradigm inspired by the way the densely interconnected, parallel structure of the mammalian brain processes information.
ANNs are collections of mathematical models that emulate some of the observed properties of biological nervous systems
and draw on the analogies of adaptive biological learning. The key element of the ANN paradigm is the novel structure of
the information processing system. It is composed of a large number of highly interconnected processing elements that
are analogous to neurons and are tied together with weighted connections that are analogous to synapses. A typical neuronal
model is thus comprised of weighted connectors, an adder and a transfer function (Fig. 4).
Indeed, that means, the neurons are grouped into distinct layers and interconnected according to a given architecture. As
in nature, the network’s function is determined largely by the connections between elements (neurons), each connection
between two neurons has a weight coefficient attached to it. The standard network structure for an approximation function
is the multiple-layer perception (or feed-forward network).
The feed-forward network often has one or more hidden layers of sigmoid neurons followed by an output layer of linear
neurons. Multiple-layers of neurons with nonlinear transfer functions allow the network to learn nonlinear and linear rela-

Fig. 4. The training procedure of a Neural Netwok.

 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575 567

tionships between input and output vectors. The linear output layer lets the network produce values outside the 1 to +1
range [45]. For the network, the appropriate notation is used in two-layer networks.
The number of neurons in the input and output layers is given respectively by the number of input and output variables in
the process under investigation. In this work, a feed-forward is proposed, the input layer consists of six variables (resonance
stress, frequency ratio, dynamic stress, damping, fatigue strength, mean stress) and the output layer contains one variable
(useful life).
The optimal number of neurons in the hidden layer(s) ns is difficult to specify, and depends on the type and complexity of
the task. This number is usually determined iteratively. Each neuron in the hidden layer has a bias b (threshold), which is
added to the weighted inputs to form the neuron n (Eq. (6)). This sum, n, is the argument of the transfer function f.
n1 ¼ W ið1;1Þ In1 þ W ið1;2Þ In2 þ    þ W ið1;kÞ Ink þ b1 ð6Þ
The coefficients associated with the hidden layer are grouped into matrices Wi (weights) and b1 (biases). The output layer
computes the weighted sum of the signals provided by the hidden layer, and the associated coefficients are grouped into
matrices Wo and b2. Using the matrix notation, the network output can be given by (Eq. (7)):
Out ¼ gðW o  f ðW i  In þ b1 Þ þ b2 Þ ð7Þ
Hidden layer neurons may use any differentiable transfer function to generate their output. In this work, a hyperbolic tan-
gent sigmoid transfer function (TANSIG) on hidden layer with six neurons and a linear transfer function (PURELIN) on output
layer were used for f and g, respectively [46]. The system adjusts the weights of the internal connections to minimize errors
between the network output and target output, which can be summarized as follows: At first take a group of random num-
bers as the initial values of the weights W and bias b, then compute the output of all neurons layers by layer, starting with the
input layer, using the following program:
f ¼ TANSIGðW i  Ink þ b1s Þ ð8Þ

2
f ¼ 1 ð9Þ
1 þ exp½2  ðW i  Ink þ b1s Þ

g ¼ PURELINðW o  f þ b2l Þ ð10Þ

g ¼ Outl ð11Þ
If considering the transfer functions, in the account that, the (Eq. (7)), may be expressed as follows:
Outl ¼ PURELINfW o  ½TANSIGðW i  Ink þ b1s Þ þ b2l g ð12Þ
where s is the number of neurons in the hidden layer (S = 3), k is the number of neurons in the input layer (K = 6), l is the
number of neurons in output layer (l = 1), Wi, Wo and b1s, b2l are weights and biases, respectively. The (Eq. (11)) is not com-
plex because is made up of a simple arithmetic operation. Therefore, it can be used for on-line estimation application for
industrial processes. In this work, multilayer feed-forward ANN with one hidden layer was used for all data sets. Database
sets were obtained from Kubiak and others [17,18]. The ANN was trained using the backpropagation algorithm. All calcula-
tions were carried out with Matlab mathematical software with the ANN toolbox.

4.1. Neural network learning

A learning (or training) algorithm is defined as a procedure that consists of adjusting the coefficients (weights and biases)
of a network, to minimize an error function (usually a quadratic one) between the network outputs, for a given set of inputs,
and the correct (already known) outputs. If smooth non-linearities are used, the gradient of the error function can be com-
puted by the classical backpropagation procedure. To determine the best backpropagation training algorithm, 10 backprop-
agation algorithms were studied. In addition, three neurons were used in the hidden layer for all backpropagation
algorithms. Table 1 shows a comparison of different backpropagation training algorithms. Levenberg–Marquardt backprop-
agation training algorithm could have smaller mean square error (RMSE), on the other hand, we found training with Leven-
berg Marquardt algorithm can run smoothly in computer with lower expanded memory specification (EMS), and the training
time is quickly, than the other backpropagation algorithms. Because, the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm was designed to
approach second order training speed without having to compute the Hessian matrix. When the performance function has
the form of a sum of squares (as is typical in training feed-forward networks), then the Hessian matrix can be approximated
as:

H ¼ JT J ð13Þ
And the gradient can be computed as:

g ¼ JT e ð14Þ
568 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575

Table 1
Comparison of 10 backpropagation algorithms with five neurons in the hidden layer.

Backpropagation algorithm Function Root mean square error Epoch Correlation coefficient Best linear
(RMSE) (R2) equation
Levenberg–Marquardt backpropagation trainlm 0.00235005 1000 0.990 Y = 0.990X + 0.306
Batch gradient descent traingd 0.01657932 2000 0.988 Y = 0.986X + 0.927
Batch gradient descent with momentum traingdm 0.01982303 2000 0.987 Y = 0.988X + 0.837
Polak–Ribiere conjugate gradient traincgp 0.03267017 2000 0.979 Y = 0.957X + 2.53
backpropagation
Scaled conjugate gradient backpropagation trainscg 0.44944913 2000 0.974 Y = 1.020X  0.783
BFGS quasi-Newton backpropagation trainbfg 0.48619630 2000 0.971 Y = 0.982X + 1.23
Powell–Beale conjugate gradient traincgb 0.50820237 2000 0.965 Y = 0.960X + 2.03
backpropagation
One step secant backpropagation trainoss 0.02753381 2000 0.782 Y = 0.617X + 45.3
Fletcher–Reeves conjugate gradient traincgf 0.01756329 2000 0.725 Y = 0.425X + 34.8
backpropagation
Variable learning rate backpropagation traingdx 0.02039637 2000 0.718 Y = 0.386X + 38

where J is the Jacobian matrix that contains first derivatives of the network errors with respect to the weights and biases, and
e is a vector of network errors. The Jacobian matrix can be computed through a standard backpropagation technique that is
much less complex than computing the Hessian matrix. The Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm uses this approximation to the
Hessian matrix in the following Newton like up date:

X kþ1 ¼ X k  ½J T J þ lI1 J T e ð15Þ

When the scalar l is zero, this is just Newton’s method, using the approximate Hessian matrix. When l is large, this becomes
gradient descent with a small step size. Newton’s method is faster and more accurate near an error minimum, so the aim is to
shift toward Newton’s method as quickly as possible, thus l is decreased after each successful step (reduction in perfor-
mance function) and is increased only when a tentative step would increase the performance function. In this context,
the performance function is always reduced at each iteration of the algorithm [47]. So, for this motivation, the Leven-
berg–Marquardt algorithm was considered the training algorithm in the present study.
However, the performance of the ANN model was statistically measured by the root mean square error (RMSE) and
regression coefficient, which are calculated with the experimental values and network predictions. These calculations are
used as a criterion for model adequacy (Fig. 5), obtained as follows:
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
uPQ 
u 2
t q¼1 ðyq;pred  yq;exp Þ
RMSE ¼ ð16Þ
Q
PQ
q¼1 ðyq;pred  yq;exp Þ2
R2 ¼ 1  PQ ð17Þ
q¼1 ðyq;exp  y m Þ2

Fig. 5. Recurrent network architecture to the useful life values and the procedure used for neural network learning.
 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575 569

Table 2
Characteristic of input variables to the ANN model.

Variable input layer Range

Resonances stress (MPa) 118–125
Frequency ratio 0.90–0.975
Dynamics stress (MPa) 65–70
Damping 0.019–0.021
Fatigue strength (MPa) 1000–1100
Mean stress (MPa) 550–575
Useful life (min) 103–6.1030

where Q is the number of data points, yq,pred is the network prediction, yq,exp is the experimental response, ym is the average of
actual values and q is an index of data.
Consequently, RMSE was used as the error function which measures the performance of the network. Therefore, the net-
work having minimum RMSE and maximum R2 was selected the best ANN model.

4.2. ANN model development

Since we mention previously, the input variables to ANN were the resonance stress, frequency ratio, dynamic stress,
damping, fatigue strength, mean stress and the useful life was the experimental response or output variable. The character-
istics of input and output variables are shown in Table 2.
The topology of an artificial neural network is determined by the number of layers, the number of nodes in each layer and
the nature of the transfer functions. Optimization of ANN topology is probably the most important step in the development
of a model [47].
In order to determine the optimum number of neurons in the hidden layer, a series of topologies was used, in which the
number of neurons was varied from 1 to 10. All ANNs were trained using the backpropagation algorithm (scaled conjugate
gradient algorithm). Network training is a process by which the connection weight and bias on the ANN are adapted through
a continuous process of simulation by the environment in which the network is embedded. The primary goal of training is to
minimize the error function (RMSE) by searching for a set of connection weights and biases that causes the ANN to produce
outputs that are equal or close to target values. In other words, the backpropagation algorithm minimizes the RMSE between
the observed and the predicted output in the output layer, through two phases. In the forward phase, the external input
information signals at the input neurons which are propagated forward to compute the output information signal at the out-
put neuron.
In the backward phase, modifications to the connection strengths are made, based on the basis of the difference in the
predicted and observed information signals at the output neuron [47].
The data sets were divided into training, validation and test subsets, each of which contains 5000, 2500 and 2500 samples,
respectively. The validation and test sets, for the evaluation of the validation and modeling power of the nets, were randomly
selected from the experimental data. Since the transfer function used in the hidden layer was sigmoid, all samples must be
normalized in the range of 0.1–0.9. So, all the input data sets Xi (from the training, validation and test sets) were scaled to a
new value xi as follows:
 
X i  X min
xi ¼ 0:8 þ 0:1 ð18Þ
X max  X min

The final topology was obtained after 105 runs of 1000 iterations start from random initial weights. For each runs, it was
computed the network error versus the number of neurons in the hidden layer. In Fig. 6, illustrates the network error versus
the number of neurons in the hidden layer. It was found that the network performance stabilized after inclusion of three
neurons on hidden layer (6–3–1). So, based on the approximation of RMSE function, a number of neurons in the hidden layer
equal to three, and a three layered feed-forward backpropagation neural network were used for modeling the process as de-
picted in Fig. 7.

5. Results and discussion

5.1. Proposed neural network model

A neural network with three neurons in the hidden layer (involving 25 coefficients: 21 weights and 04 biases) was found
to be efficient in predicting the useful life.
The Fig. 8A presents experimental and simulated data for learning database available. However, the Fig. 8B illustrates
experimental and simulated data for testing database.
570 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575

Fig. 6. Effect of the number of neurons in the hidden layer on the performance of the neural network.

Fig. 7. Model for the prediction of useful life values.

Fig. 8A. Experimental and simulated data for learning database values of useful life [UL].
 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575 571

Fig. 8B. Experimental and simulated data for testing database values of useful life [UL].

Table 3
Intercept and slope statistical test.

UL
Useful life
alower aupper
0.0008 0.0304
blower bupper
0.9503 1.0011

Table 4
Adjustable parameters obtained (weights and bias) in the proposed model with S = 3, K = 6.

IW(s,k) Wi(1,1) Wi(1,2) Wi(1,3) Wi(1,4) Wi(1,5) Wi(1,6)

1.79 1.14 2.53 1.21 2.37 1.17
Wi(2,1) Wi(2,2) Wi(2,3) Wi(2,4) Wi(2,5) Wi(2,6)
17.05 7.45 43.37 5.38 27.57 10.29
Wi(3,1) Wi(3,2) Wi(3,3) Wi(3,4) Wi(3,5) Wi(3,6)
2.75 0.17 3.58 0.59 0.69 12.76
Wo(s) Wo(1) Wo(2) Wo(3)
0.19 0.13 0.81
b1(s) b1(1) b1(2) b1(3)
123.17 17.15 6.39
b2 0.29

Experimental (ULEXP) and simulated (ULANN) data were compared satisfactorily through a linear regression model
ðULANN ¼ a þ b  ULEXP Þ obtaining a regression coefficient R2 = 0.9913. According to Verma and others [48,49] to satisfy
the statistical test of intercept and slope, upper and lower value of the intercepts must contain zero and upper and lower
value of the slope must contain one.
Table 3 shows the limits for test indicators, with slope containing the one and with the intercept containing zero. Con-
sequently, the proposed model passed the test with 99% confidence level. This test with information above guarantees that
ANN model has a satisfactory level of confidence.
According to the Table 4, gives the obtained parameters (Wi, Wo, b1, and b2) of the best fit for three neurons in the hidden
layer. These parameters are used in the proposed model to simulate the useful life (UL) values. Consequently, the proposed
ANN model follows Eq. (18):

2 0 13
X
S
2
UsefulLife ¼ 4W oð1;sÞ @  P   1A5 þ b2ðlÞ ð19Þ
K
s¼1 1 þ exp 2 k¼1 ðW iðs;kÞ InðkÞ Þ þ b1ðsÞ

where s is the number of neurons in the hidden layer (S = 3), k is the number of the input (K = 6), and W and b are weight and
bias, respectively.
572 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575

Table 5
Relative importance of input variables.

Input variable Importance%

Resonance stress 35.5
Frequency ratio 30
Dynamic stress 18
Damping 6
Fatigue strength 5.5
Mean stress 5
Total 100

The following Eq. (19), described the modeling behavior of useful life parameter with weights and biases. However, before
to develop useful life’s equation, we have to denote the following variables in order to simplify the calculation:

V1 = Resonance stress (MPa)

V2 = Frequency ratio
V3 = Dynamic stress (MPa)
V4 = Damping
V5 = Fatigue strength (MPa)
V6 = Mean stress (MPa)
UL = Useful Life (Min)
 
W oð1;1Þ W oð1;2Þ W oð1;3Þ W oð1;4Þ W oð1;5Þ W oð1;6Þ
UL ¼ 2 X1
þ X2
þ X3
þ X4
þ X5
þ X6
 ðW oð1;1Þ þ W oð1;2Þ þ W oð1;3Þ Þ þ b2ð1Þ ð20Þ
1þe 1þe 1þe 1þe 1þe 1þe
where

X 1 ¼ 2ðW ið1;1Þ V 1 þ W ið1;2Þ V 2 þ W ið1;3Þ V 3 þ W ið1;4Þ V 4 þ W ið1;5Þ V 5 þ W ið1;6Þ V 6 þ b1ð1Þ Þ ð21Þ

X 2 ¼ 2ðW ið2;1Þ V 1 þ W ið2;2Þ V 2 þ W ið2;3Þ V 3 þ W ið2;4Þ V 4 þ W ið2;5Þ V 5 þ W ið2;6Þ V 6 þ b1ð2Þ Þ ð22Þ

X 3 ¼ 2ðW ið3;1Þ V 1 þ W ið3;2Þ V 2 þ W ið3;3Þ V 3 þ W ið3;4Þ V 4 þ W ið3;5Þ V 5 þ W ið3;6Þ V 6 þ b1ð3Þ Þ ð23Þ

5.2. Sensitivity analysis

In order to assess the relative importance of the input variables, two evaluation processes were used. The first one was
based on the neural net weight matrix and Garson equation [50]. He proposed an equation based on the partitioning of con-
nection weights as illustrated in (Eq. (23)):
  
PNh jW ih
jm
j ho
m¼1 P Ni  jW mn j
jW ih j
Ij ¼ k¼1 km 
ð24Þ
PNi PNh ih
jW km j ho
k¼1 m¼1 PNi ih
 jW mn j
jW km j
k¼1

where Ij is the relative importance of the jth input variable on the output variable, Ni and Nh are the number of input and
hidden neurons, respectively and W is connection weight, the superscripts ‘i’, ‘h’ and ‘o’ refer to input, hidden and output
neurons, respectively. Note that the numerator in (Eq. (23)) describes the sums of absolute products of weights for each in-
put. However, the denominator in (Eq. (23)), represents the sum of all the weights feeding into hidden unit, taking the abso-
lute values.
For the relative importance of the resonance stress is:
jW ið1;1Þ j jW ið9;1Þ j
 jW oð1;1Þ j þ    þ  jW oð9;1Þ j
jW ið1;1Þ j þ jW ið1;2Þ j þ    þ jW ið1;9Þ j jW ið9;1Þ j þ jW ið9;2Þ j þ    þ jW ið9;9Þ j
jW ið1;1Þ j jW ið1;2Þ j jW ið1;8Þ j
 jW oð1;1Þ j þ    þ  jW oð9;1Þ j þ    þ
jW ið1;1Þ j þ    þ jW ið1;9Þ j jW ið1;1Þ j þ    jW ið1;9Þ j jW ið1;1Þ j þ    þ jW ið1;9Þ j
jW ið9;9Þ j
 jW oð1;1Þ j þ    þ  jW oð1;9Þ j ð25Þ
jW ið9;1Þ j þ    þ jW ið9;9Þ j

In the same way, we could find the relative importance about others inputs parameters. However, in this case it is not done
because it would be enlarged this article very much.
 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575 573

Fig. 9. Relative importance (%) of input variables on the value of useful life.

In Table 5, and Fig. 9 show the relative importance of the input variables calculated by Eq. (23). We have found that, all
variables have strong effect in terms of useful life of blades in steam turbines. However, as expected, the resonance stress
with a relative importance of 35.5% appeared to be the most influential parameter in this study.

6. Conclusions

Artificial neural networks have been widely used in modeling and simulation of steam turbines within the electric power
industry providing electric energy to the customers. Neural networks have been, also applied to various problems in design
and development of power system ever since the 1990s. Engineering failure analysis in blades of steam turbines are, in gen-
eral quite complex, due to the complexity of solving the equation that involve the resonance stress, frequency ratio, dynamic
stress, damping, fatigue strength and mean stress.
This paper confirms that ANN modeling is an effective and simple approach to successfully describe the behavior of these
complex processes, in which manipulated operational variables show a combined effect, within the range of experimental
conditions investigated. ANNs are capable to simulate the complex relationships existing between input and output process
variables in engineering failure analysis in blades of steam turbines. Therefore, the useful life parameter was successfully
predicted by applying a three layered neural network with three neurons in the hidden layer, and using backpropagation
algorithm. Simulations based on the ANN model were performed in order to estimate the behavior of the system under dif-
ferent conditions. The results obtained by ANN model show high agreement with experimental results: very good correlation
(R2 > 0.99) and small error ({RMSE = 0.000259}). Generally, as the number of simultaneously faulty components is increased,
the reliability of the network to accurately assess the fault decreases. One way of improving this reliability would be the in-
crease of sensory information by considering data at different operating points in the blade steam turbines, otherwise known
as multiple operating point analysis. However, the described methodology has been tested with data not used for training. In
addition, very high level of confidence for the ANN model was confirmed with the intercept and slope statistical test (99%).
According to the sensitivity analysis, we found that, the resonance stress is the most influential parameter.
Briefly, over this project of investigation, we have achieved, the artificial neural networks represent a relatively new
methodology for predictive modeling in blade of steam turbines. ANN’s algorithm is a form of artificial intelligence loosely
based on the brain, have demonstrated ability to learn complex and subtle relationships between variables in steam tur-
bines. In contrast with traditional statistical techniques, ANNs are capable of automatically resolving these relationships
without the need for a priori assumptions about the nature of the interactions between variables.
Right now, the most scientists and engineers around the world were willing to accept the artificial neural network be-
cause it agreed perfectly with experiment. Despite, the important role playing by ANNs. However, ANNs have weaknesses as:

 The optimal network structure for a given problem is generally not known.
 The criteria for the selection of the best training algorithms for fast convergence of given on new patterns is not
understood.
 The rules for selecting the amount and type of data for training as to improve quality of network are minimal.
574 J.A. Rodríguez et al. / Engineering Failure Analysis 35 (2013) 562–575

 The convergence of training algorithms is not guaranteed.

 Long training/adaptation times.
 Data effusive, which could be difficult to obtain in some actual situations.
 ANNs only give qualitative and quantitative results without any explanation for their significance.

Acknowledgements

J.A. Rodríguez, expresses his gratitude to CONACYT for the project with title is: Experimental and numerical study for
evaluation of reliability and life estimation of turbine blades under resonance conditions [In Spanish] whit reference num-
ber: 156757.

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