Multi-faults diagnosis of rolling bearings via adaptive customization of flexible analytical wavelet bases

Multi-faults detection is a challenge for rolling bearings due to the mode mixture and coupling of multiple fault features, as well as its easy burying in the complex, non-stationary structural vibrations and strong background noises. In this paper, a method based on the flexible analytical wavelet transform (FAWT) possessing fractional scaling and translation factors is proposed to identify multiple faults occurred in different components of rolling bearings. During the route of the proposed method, the proper FAWT bases are constructed via genetic optimization algorithm (GA) based on maximizing the spectral correlated kurtosis (SCK) which is firstly presented and proved to be efficient and effective in indicating interested fault mode. Via using the customized FAWT bases for each interested fault mode, the original vibration measurements are decomposed into fine frequency subbands, and the sensitive subband which enhances the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is selected to exhibit the fault signature on its envelope spectrum. The proposed method is tested via simulated signals, and applied to analyze the experimental vibration measurements from the running roller bearings subjected to outrace, inner-race and roller defects. The analysis results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method in identifying multi-faults occurred in different components of rolling bearings.