Fault Early Diagnosis of Rolling Element Bearings Combining Wavelet Filtering and Degree of Cyclostationarity Analysis

The vibration signals of rolling element bearing are produced by a combination of periodic and random processes due to the machine's rotation cycle and interaction with the real world. The combination of such components can give rise to signals, which have periodically time-varying ensemble statistical and are best considered as cyclostationary. When the early fault occurs, the background noise is very heavy, it is difficult to disclose the latent periodic components successfully using cyclostationary analysis alone. In this paper the degree of cyclostationarity is combined with wavelet filtering for detection of rolling element bearing early faults. Using the proposed entropy minimization rule. The parameters of the wavelet filter are optimized. This method is shown to be effective in detecting rolling element bearing early fault when cyclostationary analysis by itself fails.