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• Proposal of a methodology for estimating the period of faulty impulses. • Development of an APMESR algorithm for extracting incipient bearing fault features. • Selection of MODWPT as the linear transformation for APMESR. • Evaluation and comparison of period estimation methodologies and transformations. • Verification of APMESR's effectiveness through several simulations and experiments. Bearing incipient fault feature extraction is crucial and challenging throughout its life cycle. In this paper, an adaptive period matching enhanced sparse representation (APMESR) algorithm is developed to address this issue. First, a novel methodology for estimating the period of faulty impulses is proposed from the perspective of mining the periodicity-related numerical patterns. Second, the period estimation methodology is embedded in a sparse representation model to implement adaptive period matching to form APMESR, which is capable of achieving periodic sparsity. Third, maximal overlap discrete wavelet packet transform is selected as the linear transformation of APMESR for improving its ability to reduce noise and highlight periodic impulse signatures. Furthermore, evaluations and comparisons are conducted using simulations to demonstrate the validity and performance of the proposed period estimation methodology, linear transformation, and APMESR. Experimental results indicate that APMESR can effectively extract incipient bearing fault features and outperforms other well-advanced methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Gearbox fault diagnosis is very important for preventing catastrophic accidents. Vibration signals of gearboxes measured by sensors are useful and dependable as they carry key information related to the mechanical faults in gearboxes. Effective signal processing techniques are in necessary demands to extract the fault features contained in the collected gearbox vibration signals. Overcomplete rational dilation discrete wavelet transform (ORDWT) enjoys attractive properties such as better shift-invariance, adjustable time–frequency distributions and flexible wavelet atoms of tunable oscillation in comparison with classical dyadic wavelet transform (DWT). Due to these advantages, ORDWT is presented as a versatile tool that can be adapted to analysis of gearbox fault features of different types, especially in analyzing the non-stationary and transient characteristics of the signals. Aiming to extract the various types of fault features confronted in gearbox fault diagnosis, a fault feature extraction technique based on ORDWT is proposed in this paper. In the routine of the proposed technique, ORDWT is used as the pre-processing decomposition tool, and a corresponding post-processing method is combined with ORDWT to extract the fault feature of a specific type. For extracting periodical impulses in the signal, an impulse matching algorithm is presented. In this algorithm, ORDWT bases of varied time–frequency distributions and varied oscillatory natures are adopted, moreover an improved signal impulsiveness measure derived from kurtosis is developed for choosing optimal ORDWT bases that perfectly match the hidden periodical impulses. For demodulation purpose, an improved instantaneous time–frequency spectrum (ITFS), based on the combination of ORDWT and Hilbert transform, is presented. For signal denoising applications, ORDWT is enhanced by neighboring coefficient shrinkage strategy as well as subband selection step to reveal the buried transient vibration contents. The proposed fault feature extraction technique is applied in a range of engineering applications, and the processing results demonstrate that the ORDWT-based feature extraction technique successfully identifies the incipient fault features in the cases where DWT and empirical mode decomposition method are less effective. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In order to enhance the desired features related to some special type of machine fault, a technique based on the dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT) is proposed in this paper. It is demonstrated that DTCWT enjoys better shift invariance and reduced spectral aliasing than second-generation wavelet transform (SGWT) and empirical mode decomposition by means of numerical simulations. These advantages of the DTCWT arise from the relationship between the two dual-tree wavelet basis functions, instead of the matching of the used single wavelet basis function to the signal being analyzed. Since noise inevitably exists in the measured signals, an enhanced vibration signals denoising algorithm incorporating DTCWT with NeighCoeff shrinkage is also developed. Denoising results of vibration signals resulting from a crack gear indicate the proposed denoising method can effectively remove noise and retain the valuable information as much as possible compared to those DWT- and SGWT-based NeighCoeff shrinkage denoising methods. As is well known, excavation of comprehensive signatures embedded in the vibration signals is of practical importance to clearly clarify the roots of the fault, especially the combined faults. In the case of multiple features detection, diagnosis results of rolling element bearings with combined faults and an actual industrial equipment confirm that the proposed DTCWT-based method is a powerful and versatile tool and consistently outperforms SGWT and fast kurtogram, which are widely used recently. Moreover, it must be noted, the proposed method is completely suitable for on-line surveillance and diagnosis due to its good robustness and efficient algorithm. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]