Multistage Fault Feature Extraction of Consistent Optimization for Rolling Bearings Based on Correlated Kurtosis

Fault diagnosis of rolling bearings is not a trivial task because fault-induced periodic transient impulses are always submerged in environmental noise as well as large accidental impulses and attenuated by transmission path. In most hybrid diagnostic methods available for rolling bearings, the problems lie in twofolds. First, most optimization indices used in the individual signal processing stage do not take the periodical characteristic of fault transient impulses into consideration. Second, the individual stages make use of different optimization indices resulting in inconsistent optimization directions and possibly an unsatisfied diagnosis. To solve these problems, a multistage fault feature extraction method of consistent optimization for rolling bearings based on correlated kurtosis (CK) is proposed where maximum correlated kurtosis deconvolution (MCKD) is employed to attenuate the influence of transmission path followed by tunable Q factor wavelet transform (TQWT) to further enhance fault features by decomposing the preprocessed signals into multiple subbands under different Q values. The major contribution of the proposed approach is to consistently use CK as an optimization index of both MCKD and TQWT. The subband signal with the maximum CK which is an index being able to measure the periodical transient impulses in vibration signal yields an envelope spectrum, from which fault diagnosis is implemented. Simulated and experimental signals verified the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed method.