Extended stochastic resonance (SR) and its applications in weak mechanical signal processing

To catch symptoms of machine failure as early as possible, one of the most important strategies is to apply more progressive techniques during signal processing. This paper presents a method based on stochastic resonance (SR) to detect weak fault signal. First, a discrete model of a bistable system that can demonstrate SR is researched, and the stability condition for controlling the selection of model parameters of the discrete model and guarantee the solving convergence are established. Then, the frequency range of the weak signals that the SR model can detect is extended through a type of normalized scale transformation. Finally, the method is applied to extract the weak characteristic component from heavy noise to indicate the little crack fault in a bearing outer circle. © Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag 2009.