Rolling element bearing fault detection using support vector machine with improved ant colony optimization

In support vector machine (SVM), it is quite necessary to optimize the parameters which are the key factors impacting the classification performance. Improved ant colony optimization (IACO) algorithm is proposed to determine the parameters, and then the IACO-SVM algorithm is applied on the rolling element bearing fault detection. Both the optimal and the worst solutions found by the ants are allowed to update the pheromone trail density, and the mesh is applied in the ACO to adjust the range of optimized parameters. The experimental data of rolling bearing vibration signal is used to illustrate the performance of IACO-SVM algorithm by comparing with the parameters in SVM optimized by genetic algorithm (GA), cross-validation and standard ACO methods. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm of IACO-SVM can give higher recognition accuracy.