Health monitoring of rolling element bearing using a spectrum searching strategy

Aiming at achieving early fault diagnosis and tracking the degradation process of bearings, we propose a novel monitoring methodology using a spectrum searching strategy in this paper. Firstly, a vibration signal is collected with appropriate sampling frequency and length. Secondly, the structural information of spectrum (SIOS) on a predefined frequency grid is constructed through a searching algorithm after deriving the single-sided FFT spectrum. Finally, the two-dimensional (2-D) line plot of the frequency grid versus the average power in SIOS is employed to conduct fault detection and the sum of the largest six total-power (SLSTP) of the frequency grid in SIOS is calculated as a health indication to demonstrate the changes in the bearing's health status. The performance of the proposed scheme is validated with both simulation and bearing data. Experimental results show that the monitoring algorithm could manifest satisfactory behaviors in early fault diagnosis and health assessment of bearings.