Rolling bearing fault degree recognition based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition and support vector regression

The research in bearing fault diagnosis has been attracting great attention in the past decades. Development of feasible fault diagnosis procedures to prevent failures that could cause huge economic loss timely is necessary. The whole life of the bearing is also a developing process for some sensitive features related to the fault trend. In this paper, a new scheme based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and support vector regression (SVR) to conduct bearing fault degree recognition is proposed. This analysis first extracts the sensitive features from the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) produced by EEMD which is a potential time-frequency analysis method, and then constructs an intelligent nonlinear model with input feature vectors extracted from the IMFs and defect size as output. Through validation of experimental data, the results indicated that the bearing fault degree could be effectively and precisely recognized.