Time-Frequency Squeezing and Generalized Demodulation Combined for Variable Speed Bearing Fault Diagnosis

High-resolution time-frequency representation (TFR) method is effective for signal analysis and feature detection. However, for variable speed bearing vibration signal, conventional TFR method is prone to blur and affect the accuracy of the instantaneous frequency estimation. Moreover, the traditional order tracking, relying on equi-angular resampling, usually suffers from interpolation error. To solve such problems, we propose a joint time-frequency (TF) squeezing method and generalized demodulation (GD) to realize variable speed bearing fault diagnosis. The method can represent the time-varying fault characteristic frequency precisely and be free from resampling. First, using fast spectral kurtosis to select the optimal-frequency band which is sensitive to rolling bearing fault, and extracting envelope by Hilbert transform within the selected optimal frequency band. Next, a high-quality TF clustering method based on short-time Fourier transform is applied to the TF analysis of the envelope to get a clear TFR, from which the frequency information for GD is obtained. Finally, processing the basic demodulator via the peak search through the TF analysis results in the TFR for GD to gain a resampling-free-order spectrum. Based on the more precise TF information from the clearer TFR, the bearing fault can be diagnosed via GD without tachometer or any resampling involved, avoiding the amplitude error and low computational efficiency of resampling. Simulation study and experimental signal analysis validate that the proposed method has better performance than those methods based on conventional TF analysis and resampling.