Multiscale Entropy-Based Feature Extraction for the Detection of Instability Inception in Axial Compressors

The detection of instability inception is favorable to avoid compressor instability. In this paper, a multiscale entropy-based feature extraction is developed for the detection of the instability inception in axial compressors. Nonlinear and statistical features of the short-time instability inception are extracted by generally combining multiscale entropy and statistical features. First, nonlinear features are extracted by refined composite multiscale entropy to avoid the inaccurate estimation or undefined entropy of multiscale entropy for short time series. Second, the time-domain-based statistical features are chosen to capture more information on instability inception, and the dominant statistical features are determined by random forests implemented with the mean decrease accuracy algorithm at each time scale. The obtained refined composite dominant statistical features are regarded as weighting factors and integrated with the refined composite multiscale entropy to generate a combined feature. Finally, numerical simulation results on two synthetic noise datasets and a compressor instability model dataset are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness, efficiency, and robustness of the combined features under different conditions.