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• Proposed cycle envelope spectral segmentation method based to optimize EWT. • Calculate the similarity of the envelope spectra of adjacent signals to optimize the components. • A new indicator called sensitive IMFs assessing index (SIAI) was designed to identify fault information. The empirical wavelet transform (EWT) has made outstanding contributions in the field of fault diagnosis. However, when EWT processes complex signals, there may be modal aliasing or meaningless components. In order to solve the spectral segmentation defect of the EWT method and improve its ability to extract bearing fault features, this paper proposes a new algorithm to improve EWT. In order to weaken the influence of extreme points in the complex Fourier spectrum on modal differentiation, the cycle envelope spectral segmentation method is proposed. The maximum envelope fitting method not only reduces the number of useless extreme points, but also highlights each mode. The number of filters is reduced while suppressing the interference of noise on the modal. The components that contain similar information in the result will be merged based on their correlation. Then sensitive IMFs assessing index (SIAI) is proposed to combine correlation and symmetry of the signal, and obtains the characteristics of time domain, frequency domain, and amplitude domain to extract fault information. Locomotive bearing and wind turbine gearbox bearing fault data verified the effectiveness of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]