Automatic Feature Extraction Based on Envelope Analysis and its Application in Rolling-Element Bearing Fault Detection

Abstract

Bearing fault diagnosis is essential for the maintenance, durability, and reliability of rotating machines. It can minimize economic losses by removing unplanned downtime in the industry due to the failure of rotary machines. In bearing fault detection, developing fault features extraction techniques that can successfully applicable for various fault severity and different operating conditions is still a critical issue. In the current work, the feature extraction technique is a combination between pre-processing algorithms and envelope analysis method. In the pre-processing stage, the autoregressive (AR) model is used to filter the original signal and remove the deterministic vibration sources, as well as maintain the signal representing the condition of the bearing without contaminating noises. Then, the most suitable frequency band is selected based on the spectral kurtosis (SK) analysis. This band contains the signature frequencies of the roller bearing. After that, envelope analysis is employed for detecting faults at different severity. Finally, the features represented the peaks at fundamental fault frequencies are automatically selected from the envelope spectrum. By analyzing all diagnoses results, it is found that the presented method effectively extracts the features at calculated resonance bearing frequencies and proves the significance of the enhancements in a pre-filtering stage in the overall detection performance. Also, it can benefit from these features in the fault classification fields at different speeds because it is independent of speed variation.