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A novel bearing fault diagnosis method combining feature extraction based on wavelet packets quantifiers and pattern recognition method based on improved initialization method of Discriminative K-SVD (D-KSVD) algorithm is proposed. In D-KSVD algorithm, the representational power of dictionary and discriminative ability of classifier are seriously affected by their initialization values. Therefore, the improved initialization method of D-KSVD is presented and employed for bearing fault diagnosis. The improvement is that during the initialization of training stage, subdictionaries corresponding to each category are trained by K-SVD separately and then the initial dictionary is constructed by cascading the subdictionaries, which can completely represent the characteristics of all categories, and as for the initialization of linear classifier, naive Bayesian classifier is utilized. The experimental results show that under the same parameters the improved D-KSVD has better classification ability compared with traditional D-KSVD and some other classification methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to diagnose the bearing fault to prevent the serious accident of equipment. This paper introduces a bearing fault identification scheme based on envelope power spectrum analysis, linear discriminate analysis and continuous hidden Markov model. First the envelope power spectrum features are extracted from amplitude demodulated vibration signals from fault bearings. Then, linear discriminate analysis is employed to reduce the feature dimensions, which are helpful for improving the computing speed and diagnosing accuracy. At last, the new linear discriminate analysis features are input into continuous hidden Markov model to train the models under different conditions, respectively. In bearing fault identification, test data are input into the pretrained continuous hidden Markov models, and the bearing state can be detected by the output of continuous hidden Markov model. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, experimental samples of four bearing conditions at different fault sizes and loads are utilized to test the continuous hidden Markov model and back-propagation neural network. The result shows that continuous hidden Markov model and linear discriminate analysis-based method have higher accuracy and efficiency than back-propagation neural network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rolling element bearings are vital components in rotating machines, and it is important to diagnose bearing faults to avoid serious accidents in equipment. In this paper, singular spectrum analysis (SSA) is utilized to extract the bearing fault features. SSA is a non-parametric technique of time series analysis which decomposes the acquired vibration signals into an additive set of time series. Based on the selected singular features from SSA, a continuous hidden Markov model (CHMM) is introduced to diagnose the bearing fault. The detailed description and identification results of applying the proposed method to rolling element bearing fault diagnosis are shown in experiment 1. In experiment 2, a rolling element bearing accelerated life test is performed to simulate the performance variation of the bearing. The result demonstrates that the singular features and CHMM can reflect the performance degradation of the bearing from health to failure. A conclusion can be made that SSA and CHMM are feasible and effective in bearing fault diagnosis and performance assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The bearing is the key component in a rotating machine. It is important to assess the performance degradation of bearings for realizing proactive maintenance and near-zero downtime. In this paper, a methodology based on the zero crossing characteristic features and a coupled hidden Markov model is introduced for estimating bearing performance degradation. Zero crossing features are time domain representations of the vibration signature in the spectrum domain. They discover the change of bearing performance. When zero crossing features are extracted, a coupled hidden Markov model is employed to assess the performance degradation quantitatively. Results from a bearing accelerated life experiment validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In vibration analysis, fault feature extraction from strong background noises is of great importance. Frequency band entropy based on short-time Fourier transform illustrates the complexity of every frequency component in the frequency domain, and it can be used to detect the periodical components hidden in the signal. This article shows how the frequency band entropy offers a robust way in detecting faults even when the signal is under strong masking noises. Furthermore, frequency band entropy provides a way of blindly designing optimal band-pass filters. The filtering signal combined with envelope analysis is helpful in fault diagnosis. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated on both simulated and actual data from rolling bearings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Rolling element bearings are frequently used in rotary machinery, but they are also fragile mechanical parts. Hence, exact condition monitoring and fault diagnosis for them plays an important role in ensuring machinery''s reliable running. Timely diagnosis of early bearing faults is desirable, but the early fault signatures are easily submerged in noise. In this paper, Wigner–Ville spectrum based on cyclic spectral density (CSWVS for a brief notation) is studied, which is able to represent the cyclostationary signals while reducing the masking effect of additive stationary noise. Both simulations and experiments show that CSWVS is a noise resistant time frequency analysis technique for extracting bearing fault patterns, when bearing signals are under influences of random noise and gear vibrations. The 3-D feature of the CSWVS is proved useful in extracting bearing fault pattern from gearbox vibration signals, where bearing signals are affected by gear meshing vibration and noise. Besides, CSWVS utilizes the second order cyclostationary property of the vibration signals produced by bearing distributed fault, and clearly extracts its fault features, which cannot be extracted by envelope analysis. To quantitatively describe the extent of bearing fault, Renyi information encoded in the time frequency diagram of CSWVS is studied. It is shown to be a more sensitive index to reflect bearing performance degradation, compared with the spectral entropy (SE), squared envelope spectrum entropy (SESE) and Renyi informations for WVD, PWVD, especially when SNR is low. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Spectral kurtosis (SK) is an algorithm that gives an indication of how kurtosis varies with frequency. A frequency band that contains abundant information, especially the impact signal, can be tracked by calculating SK. In the present article, SK combined with Autoregressive AR model, was applied into the fault diagnosis and condition monitoring of bearings. Accelerated life test of rolling bearings in Hangzhou Bearing Test & Research Center (HBRC) was performed to collect vibration data over their entire lifetime (normal-fault-failure). The result shows that SK can detect early incipient fault by eliminating some other interfering frequency components. In addition, it can detect fault 5 min earlier than root mean value (RMS). This fault detection in advance is significant for condition monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fault feature extraction is crucial to condition monitoring and fault prognostics. However, when fault is in the initial stage, it is often very weak and submerged in the strong noise. This makes the fault feature very difficult to be extracted. In this paper, we propose a novel method based on sparse representation theory. It is inspired by the traditional K-SVD based de-noising method and can penetrate into the underlying structure of the signal. It learns sparse coefficients and dictionary from the noisy signal itself. The coefficients are globally optimized based on an l 1 -regularized least square problem solving method, which can locate the impulse coordinates more accurately compared with orthonormal matching pursuit (OMP) applied in the traditional K-SVD. The dictionary learning is based on an approximation of singular value decomposition (SVD). With the learned dictionary, we can capture the higher-level structure of the signal. Combining the sparse coefficients and the learned dictionary, we can de-noise the signal effectively and extract the incipient weak fault features of rolling bearings. The results of processing both simulated and experimental signals are illustrated and both validate the proposed method. All the experimental data are also processed by SpaEIAD, wavelet shrinkage, and fast kurtogram for comparison. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hidden Markov model (HMM) has been widely applied in bearing performance degradation assessment. As a machine learning-based model, its accuracy, subsequently, is dependent on the sensitivity of the features used to estimate the degradation performance of bearings. It׳s a big challenge to extract effective features which are not influenced by other qualities or attributes uncorrelated with the bearing degradation condition. In this paper, a bearing performance degradation assessment method based on HMM and nuisance attribute projection (NAP) is proposed. NAP can filter out the effect of nuisance attributes in feature space through projection. The new feature space projected by NAP is more sensitive to bearing health changes and barely influenced by other interferences occurring in operation condition. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, two different experimental databases are utilized. The results show that the combination of HMM and NAP can effectively improve the accuracy and robustness of the bearing performance degradation assessment system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many existing signal processing methods usually select a predefined basis function in advance. This basis functions selection relies on a priori knowledge about the target signal, which is always infeasible in engineering applications. Dictionary learning method provides an ambitious direction to learn basis atoms from data itself with the objective of finding the underlying structure embedded in signal. As a special case of dictionary learning methods, shift-invariant dictionary learning (SIDL) reconstructs an input signal using basis atoms in all possible time shifts. The property of shift-invariance is very suitable to extract periodic impulses, which are typical symptom of mechanical fault signal. After learning basis atoms, a signal can be decomposed into a collection of latent components, each is reconstructed by one basis atom and its corresponding time-shifts. In this paper, SIDL method is introduced as an adaptive feature extraction technique. Then an effective approach based on SIDL and hidden Markov model (HMM) is addressed for machinery fault diagnosis. The SIDL-based feature extraction is applied to analyze both simulated and experiment signal with specific notch size. This experiment shows that SIDL can successfully extract double impulses in bearing signal. The second experiment presents an artificial fault experiment with different bearing fault type. Feature extraction based on SIDL method is performed on each signal, and then HMM is used to identify its fault type. This experiment results show that the proposed SIDL-HMM has a good performance in bearing fault diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When early weak fault emerges in rolling bearing the fault feature is too weak to extract using the traditional fault diagnosis methods such as Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and envelope demodulation. The tunable Q-factor wavelet transform (TQWT) is the improvement of traditional one single Q-factor wavelet transform, and it is very fit for separating the low Q-factor transient impact component from the high Q-factor sustained oscillation components when fault emerges in rolling bearing. However, it is hard to extract the rolling bearing’ early weak fault feature perfectly using the TQWT directly. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is the improvement of empirical mode decomposition (EMD) which not only has the virtue of self-adaptability of EMD but also overcomes the mode mixing problem of EMD. The original signal of rolling bearing’ early weak fault is decomposed by EEMD and several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) are obtained. Then the IMF with biggest kurtosis index value is selected and handled by the TQWT subsequently. At last, the envelope demodulation method is applied on the low Q-factor transient impact component and satisfactory extraction result is obtained. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Rolling element bearing faults are among the main causes of breakdown in rotating machines. In this paper, a rolling bearing fault model is proposed based on the dynamic load analysis of a rotor-bearing system. The rotor impact factor is taken into consideration in the rolling bearing fault signal model. The defect load on the surface of the bearing is divided into two parts, the alternate load and the determinate load. The vibration response of the proposed fault signal model is investigated and the fault signal calculating equation is derived through dynamic and kinematic analysis. Outer race and inner race fault simulations are realized in the paper. The simulation process includes consideration of several parameters, such as the gravity of the rotor-bearing system, the imbalance of the rotor, and the location of the defect on the surface. The simulation results show that different amplitude contributions of the alternate load and determinate load will cause different envelope spectrum expressions. The rotating frequency sidebands will occur in the envelope spectrum in addition to the fault characteristic frequency. This appearance of sidebands will increase the difficulty of fault recognition in intelligent fault diagnosis. The experiments given in the paper have successfully verified the proposed signal model simulation results. The test rig design of the rotor bearing system simulated several operating conditions: (1) rotor bearing only; (2) rotor bearing with loader added; (3) rotor bearing with loader and rotor disk; and (4) bearing fault simulation without rotor influence. The results of the experiments have verified that the proposed rolling bearing signal model is important to the rolling bearing fault diagnosis of rotor-bearing systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Rolling element bearing faults are among the main causes of rotating machines breakdown. It is important to distinguish the incipient fault before the bearings step into serious failure. Based on the traditional singular value decomposition (SVD) theory, short-time matrix series (STMS) and singular value ratio (SVR) are introduced to the vibration signal processing. The proposed signal processing method is called S-SVDR (STMS based SVD method using SVR) and it has been proved to have a good local identification capability in the rolling bearing fault diagnosis. The detailed description of applying S-SVDR methods to rolling bearing fault diagnosis is given through the artificial fault signal processing in experiment 1. In experiment 2, rolling element bearing accelerated life test is performed in Hangzhou Bearing Test & Research Center (HBRC). The experimental result shows that the incipient fault can be well detected through S-SVDR processing method. However, the envelope analysis of original signal cannot detect the fault due to the existence of signal interference. A conclusion can be made that the proposed S-SVDR method has a good effect on de-noising and eliminating the signal interference of rolling bearing for the fault diagnosis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In vibration analysis, weak fault feature extraction under strong background noise is of great importance. A method based on cyclic Wiener filter and envelope spectrum analysis is proposed. Cyclic Wiener filter exploits the spectral coherence theory induced by the second-order cyclostationary signal. The original signal is duplicated and shifted in the frequency domain by amounts corresponding to the cyclic frequencies. The noise component is optimally filtered by a filter-bank. The filtered signal is analyzed by performing envelope spectrum. In the envelope spectrum, characteristic frequencies are quite clear. Then the most impactive part is effectively extracted for further fault diagnosis. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated on both simulated signal and actual data from rolling bearing accelerated life test. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]