Application of Self-Adaptive Wavelet Ridge Demodulation Method Based on LCD to Incipient Fault Diagnosis

When a local defect occurs in gearbox, the vibration signals present as the form of multicomponent amplitude modulation and frequency modulation (AM-FM). Demodulation analysis is an effective way for this kind of signal. A self-adaptive wavelet ridge demodulation method based on LCD is proposed in this paper. Firstly, multicomponent AM-FM signal is decomposed into series of intrinsic scale components (ISCs) and the special intrinsic scale component is selected in order to decrease the lower frequency background noise. Secondly, the genetic algorithm is employed to optimize wavelet parameters according to the inherent characteristics of signal; thirdly, self-adaptive wavelet ridge demodulation wavelet for the selected ISC component is performed to get instantaneous amplitude (IA) or instantaneous frequency (IF). Lastly, the characteristics frequency can be obtained to identify the working state or failure information from its spectrum. By two simulation signals, the proposed method was compared with various existing demodulation methods; the simulation results show that it has higher accuracy and higher noise tolerant performance than others. Furthermore, the proposed method was applied to incipient fault diagnosis for gearbox and the results show that it is simple and effective.