Vibration analysis of rolling element bearings with various defects under the action of an unbalanced force

In this paper, a method based on the finite element vibration analysis is presented for defect detection in rolling element bearings with single or multiple defects on different components of the bearing structure using the time and frequency domain parameters. A dynamic loading model is proposed in order to create the nodal excitation functions used in the finite element vibration analysis as external loading. A computer code written in Visual Basic programming language with a graphical user interface is developed to create the nodal excitations for different cases including the outer ring, inner ring or rolling element defects. Forced vibration analysis of a bearing structure is performed using the commercial finite element package I-DEAS under the action of an unbalanced force transferred to the structure via a ball bearing. Time and frequency domain parameters such as rms, crest factor, kurtosis and band energy ratio for the frequency spectrum of the enveloped signals are used to analyse the effect of the defect location and the number of defects on the time and frequency domain parameters. The role of the receiving point for vibration measurements is also investigated. The vibration data for various defect cases including the housing structure effect can be obtained using the finite element vibration analysis in order to develop an optimum monitoring method in condition monitoring studies.     

Active magnetic bearings used as exciters for rolling element bearing outer race defect diagnosis

The active health monitoring of rotordynamic systems in the presence of bearing outer race defect is considered in this paper. The shaft is assumed to be supported by conventional mechanical bearings and an active magnetic bearing (AMB) is used in the mid of the shaft location as an exciter to apply electromagnetic force to the system. We investigate a nonlinear bearing-pedestal system model with the outer race defect under the electromagnetic force. The nonlinear differential equations are integrated using the fourth-order Runge–Kutta algorithm. The simulation and experimental results show that the characteristic signal of outer race incipient defect is significantly amplified under the electromagnetic force through the AMBs, which is helpful to improve the diagnosis accuracy of rolling element bearing׳s incipient outer race defect.     

Application of acoustic emission technique for the detection of defects in rolling element bearings

The usefulness of acoustic emission (AE) measurements for the detection of defects in roller bearings has been investigated in the present study. Defects were simulated in the roller and inner race of the bearings by the spark erosion method. AE of bearings without defect and with defects of different sizes has been measured. For small defect sizes, ringdown counts of AE signal has been found to be a very good parameter for the detection of defects both in the inner race and roller of the bearings tested. However, the counts stopped increasing after a certain defect size. Distributions of events by ringdown counts and peak amplitudes are also found to be good indicators of bearing defect detection. With a defect on a bearing element, the distributions of events tend to be over a wider range of peak amplitudes and counts.     

Application of an improved kurtogram method for fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings

Kurtogram, due to the superiority of detecting and characterizing transients in a signal, has been proved to be a very powerful and practical tool in machinery fault diagnosis. Kurtogram, based on the short time Fourier transform (STFT) or FIR filters, however, limits the accuracy improvement of kurtogram in extracting transient characteristics from a noisy signal and identifying machinery fault. Therefore, more precise filters need to be developed and incorporated into the kurtogram method to overcome its shortcomings and to further enhance its accuracy in discovering characteristics and detecting faults. The filter based on wavelet packet transform (WPT) can filter out noise and precisely match the fault characteristics of noisy signals. By introducing WPT into kurtogram, this paper proposes an improved kurtogram method adopting WPT as the filter of kurtogram to overcome the shortcomings of the original kurtogram. The vibration signals collected from rolling element bearings are used to demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed method compared with the original kurtogram. The results verify the effectiveness of the method in extracting fault characteristics and diagnosing faults of rolling element bearings.     

On the thermally-induced seizure in bearings: A review

This paper presents a state-of-the-art survey of papers reported on the nature of a troublesome failure mode in bearings known as seizure. This mode of failure is thermally-induced and it occurs in both journal and rolling element bearings. To gain insight, particular attention is given to reported experimental observation, various mechanisms involved, and available prediction methodologies.     

A review of vibration and acoustic measurement methods for the detection of defects in rolling element bearings

A review of vibration and acoustic measurement methods for the detection of defects in rolling element bearings is presented in this paper. Detection of both localized and distributed categories of defect has been considered. An explanation for the vibration and noise generation in bearings is given. Vibration measurement in both time and frequency domains along with signal processing techniques such as the high-frequency resonance technique have been covered. Other acoustic measurement techniques such as sound pressure, sound intensity and acoustic emission have been reviewed. Recent trends in research on the detection of defects in bearings, such as the wavelet transform method and automated data processing, have also been included.     

滚动轴承疲劳故障在线诊断的研究

通过对滚动轴承振动信号的在线监测提取出对疲劳故障敏感的参数：峭度、功率谱故障频带能量值、小波包故障频带能量值．选择足够的具有代表性的样本数据训练神经网络,用训练好的神经网络进行在线诊断,可以得出轴承发生疲劳故障的程度,再经过共振解调法诊断出轴承具体损伤的元件,实验表明本方法对滚动轴承的疲劳故障能正确诊断。该监测和诊断方法对其他设备的监测和诊断也有重要的意义。     

Acoustic emission of rolling bearings lubricated with contaminated grease

In elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL), an extreme smoothness of the contacting surfaces is essential for the formation of a thin lubricant film, which separates the moving surfaces from each other. Sharp asperities, in particular, are very detrimental for the sliding surfaces. Because of the limited thickness of the lubricating film, the contact zone is very vulnerable if the lubricant contains contaminants, especially if hard particles are present in the lubricant.The present paper focuses on the acoustic emission (AE) measurement method for the monitoring of the lubrication situation in a grease lubricated rolling bearing. The aim of the investigation was to clarify how the contaminants in the grease influence the acoustic emission of the rolling bearing. In the paper, the results of tests with clean greases and with deliberately contaminated greases, and the influence of the cleaning and re-greasing of the bearing are discussed. The results showed that the AE measurement indicated very clearly the lowest contaminant concentration included in the study that was as low as 0.02 weight-%. Small size contaminant particles generated a higher AE pulse count level than large size particles. The AE time signal analysis method proved to be a suitable method to indicate the hardness of the contaminant particles. Cleaning the bearing of contaminants and re-greasing with a clean grease reduced the AE level of the bearing.     

Vibration response of spalled rolling element bearings: Observations, simulations and signal processing techniques to track the spall size

Fatigue in rolling element bearings, resulting in spalling of the races and/or rolling elements, is the most common cause of bearing failure. The useful life of the bearing may extend considerably beyond the appearance of the first spall and a premature removal of the bearing from service can be very expensive, but on the other hand chances cannot be taken with safety of machines or personnel. Previous studies indicated that there might be two parts to the defect vibration signal of a spalled bearing, the first part being originating from the entry of the rolling element into the fault (de-stress) and the second part being due to the departure of the rolling element from the fault (re-stress). This is investigated in this paper using vibration signatures of seeded faults at different speeds. The acceleration signals resulting from the entry of the rolling element into the spall and exit from it were found to be of different natures. The entry into the fault can be described as a step response, with mainly low frequency content, while the impact excites a much broader frequency impulse response. The latter is the most noticeable and prominent event, especially when examining the high pass filtered response or the enveloped signal. In order to enable a clear separation of the two events, and produce an averaged estimate of the size of the fault, two approaches are proposed to enhance the entry event while keeping the impulse response. The first approach (joint treatment) utilizes pre-whitening to balance the low and high frequency energy, then octave band wavelet analysis to allow selection of the best band (or scale) to balance the two pulses with similar frequency content. In the second approach, a separate treatment is applied to the step and the impulse responses, so that they can be equally represented in the signal. Cepstrum analysis can be used to give an average estimate of the spacing between the entry and impact events, but the latter can also be assessed by an arithmetic estimation of the mean and standard deviation of the event separation for a number of realizations, in particular for the second approach. In order to determine the effects of various simulations and signal processing parameters on the estimated delay times, the entry and exit events were simulated as modified step and impulse responses with precisely known starting times. The simulation was also found useful in pointing to artefacts associated with the cepstrum calculation, which affect even the simulated signals, and have thus prompted modifications of the processing of real signals. The results presented for the two approaches give a reasonable approximation of the measured fault widths (double the spacing between the entry and impact events) under different speed conditions, but the method of separate treatment is somewhat better and is thus recommended.     

Faults diagnosis of rolling element bearings based on modified morphological method

In order to effectively smooth noise and extract the impulse components in the vibration signals of defective rolling element bearings, a new modified morphology analytical method has been proposed. In this method, average of the closing and opening operator has been used as the morphology operator. Being the flat and zero adopted as the shape and the height of structure element (SE), respectively, the optimized length of SE is defined by a new proposed criterion (called SNR criterion). The effect of the new method is validated by both simulated impulsive signal and vibration signal of three defective rolling bearings with an outer, an inner and a rolling element faults and compared with Nikolaou’s method. The result shows that the proposed method has the superior performance in extracting impulsive characteristics of vibration signals, especially for the high level noise signals, and can implement better in diagnosis of defective rolling element bearing.     

Grease lubrication of rolling element bearings — role of the grease thickener

The contribution of grease thickener to lubricant film formation was examined in this paper. Lubricant film thickness and friction were measured for different grease thickener types in a bearing simulation device. The results showed that the greases formed thick (20–80nm), low friction surface layers at low speeds, which were much greater than the corresponding base oil film. These films appeared to be formed by the physical deposition of thickener in the track during overrolling of the grease. This was confirmed by infrared reflection analysis, which showed the deposited films to have increased thickener content. The ability of grease to form renewable physically deposited solid films has significant implications for optimising lubricant formulation for certain applications, e.g. bearings operating at high temperatures and low speeds where a conventional elastohydrodynamic lubricating film would be inadequate. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic modelling of wear evolution in rolling bearings

Condition monitoring tools aim to monitor the deterioration process i.e. wear evolution of defects. The wear evolution is quite complex process due to the involvement of several wear and stress concentration mechanisms. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to provide a dynamic model of wear evolution that considers the topographical and tribological changes over the lifetime. The model suggests the use of multiple force diagrams to simulate the dynamic impact and utilises several models of contact mechanics to estimate the transition points between the wear evolution stages. The simulated results of the developed evolution model are in principal agreement with the experimental results.     

滚动轴承可靠性与寿命预测模型

从分析流动轴承的可靠性与寿命之间的关系出发,提出了在不同的可靠度范围内,采用不同的寿命计算方法。作者编制了寿命计算的软件系统以方便寿命预测。     

Effects of extreme pressure additive chemistry on rolling element bearing surface durability

Lubricant additives have been known to affect rolling element bearing surface durability for many years. Tapered roller bearings were used in fatigue testing of lubricants formulated with gear oil type additive systems. These systems have sulfur- and phosphorus-containing compounds used for gear protection as well as bearing lubrication. Several variations of a commercially available base additive formulation were tested having modified sulfur components. The variations represent a range of “active” extreme pressure (EP) chemistries. The bearing fatigue test results were compared with respect to EP formulation and test conditions. Inner ring near-surface material in selected test bearings was evaluated on two scales: the micrometer scale using optical metallography and the nanometer scale using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Focused-ion beam (FIB) techniques were used for TEM specimen preparation. Imaging and chemical analysis of the bearing samples revealed near-surface material and tribofilm characteristics. These results are discussed with respect to the relative fatigue lives.     

高速角接触球轴承接触疲劳寿命的有限元分析

首先简述了滚动轴承寿命的基本理论以及传统估算方法.然后根据轴承结构与工作特点,指出了滚动体与滚道的接触疲劳是轴承的主要失效形式,通过总结一般结构疲劳分析方法,提出了滚动轴承采用有限元法进行疲劳分析的方法和步骤.针对实际课题,对给定工况下的角接触球轴承B7005轴承接触疲劳寿命的有限元分析,将分析结果与轴承经典寿命估算结果进行了对比,一定程度上验证了提出的滚动轴承有限元疲劳分析法的合理性.     

An adaptive SK technique and its application for fault detection of rolling element bearings

In this paper, we propose an adaptive spectral kurtosis (SK) technique for the fault detection of rolling element bearings. The primary contribution is adaptive determination of the bandwidth and center frequency. This is implemented with successive attempts to right-expand a given window along the frequency axis by merging it with its subsequent neighboring windows. Influence of the parameters such as the initial window function, bandwidth and window overlap on the merged windows as well as how to choose those parameters in practical applications are explored. Based on simulated experiments, it can be found that the proposed technique can further enhance the SK-based method as compared to the kurtogram approach. The effectiveness of the proposed method in fault detection of the rolling element bearings is validated using experimental signals.     

Multi-objective iterative optimization algorithm based optimal wavelet filter selection for multi-fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings

Rolling element bearings (REBs) play an essential role in modern machinery and their condition monitoring is significant in predictive maintenance. Due to the harsh operating conditions, multi-fault may co-exist in one bearing and vibration signal always exhibits low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which causes difficulties in detecting fault. In the previous studies, maximum correlated kurtosis deconvolution (MCKD) has been validated as an efficient method to extract fault feature in the fault signals. Nonetheless, there are still some challenges when MCKD is applied to fault detection owing to the rigorous requirements of multiple input parameters. To overcome limitation, a multi-objective iterative optimization algorithm (MOIOA) for multi-fault diagnosis is proposed. In this method, correlated kurtosis (CK) is taken as a criterion to select optimal Morlet wavelet filter using the whale optimization algorithm (WOA). Meanwhile, to further eliminate the effect of the inaccurate period on CK, the update process of period is incorporated. After that, the simulated and experimental signals are utilized to testify the validity and superiority of the MOIOA for multiple faults detection by the comparison with MCKD. The results indicate that MOIOA is efficient to extract weak fault features even with heavy noise and harmonic interferences.     

Vibration monitoring of rolling element bearings by the high-frequency resonance technique — a review

Vibration monitoring of rolling element bearings by the high-frequency resonance technique is reviewed. It is shown that the procedures for obtaining the spectrum of the envelope signal are well established, but that there is an incomplete understanding of the factors which control the appearance of this spectrum. Until the envelope spectrum can be fully explained, use of the technique is limited     

Appearance of craters on track surface of rolling element bearings by spark erosion

A theoretical investigation has been carried out to determine the time span for the appearance of craters by spark erosion on the track surfaces of rolling-element bearings operating under the influence of shaft voltages. An analytical model has been developed using the continuum theory of Griffith to determine energy per unit area required for the development of craters on the track surfaces. Also, an expression is deduced for the net energy transmitted per unit area on the track surfaces by the leakage of stored charge energy resulting in the appearance of craters under the effect of shaft voltage and bearing capacitance depending on operational and dimensional parameters of a bearing in a given span of operation. By the formulation of capacitive stored energy in a bearing using high resitivity lubricant, along with the developed model and expressions using the ratio of cycles to accumulate and discharge of the accumulated charge energy at the various levels of bearing to shaft voltage, the time span/cycles for the appearance of craters of specified dimensions by spark erosion has been determined. Matching time span/cycles has been ascertained by the investigation of a case history of the diagnosis of bearings that failed by crater formation. The analysis can also be used for determination of shaft voltage if the time span/cycles for the formation of known size craters and bearing capacitance are established.