Envelope order tracking for fault detection in rolling element bearings

An envelope order tracking analysis scheme is proposed in the paper for the fault detection of rolling element bearing (REB) under varying-speed running condition. The developed method takes the advantages of order tracking, envelope analysis and spectral kurtosis. The fast kurtogram algorithm is utilized to obtain both optimal center frequency and bandwidth of the band-pass filter based on the maximum spectral kurtosis. The envelope containing vibration features of the incipient REB fault can be extracted adaptively. The envelope is re-sampled by the even-angle sampling scheme, and thus the non-stationary signal in the time domain is represented as a quasi-stationary signal in the angular domain. As a result, the frequency-smear problem can be eliminated in order spectrum and the fault diagnosis of REB in the varying-speed running condition of the rotating machinery is achieved. Experiments are conducted to verify the validity of the proposed method. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.