Rolling Element Bearing Fault Diagnosis Based on Multiscale General Fractal Features

Abstract

Nonlinear characteristics are ubiquitous in the vibration signals produced by rolling element bearings. Fractal dimensions are effective tools to illustrate nonlinearity. This paper proposes a new approach based on Multiscale General Fractal Dimensions (MGFDs) to realize fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings, which are robust to the effects of variation in operating conditions. The vibration signals of bearing are analyzed to extract the general fractal dimensions in multiscales, which are in turn utilized to construct a feature space to identify fault pattern. Finally, bearing faults are revealed by pattern recognition. Case studies are carried out to evaluate the validity and accuracy of the approach. It is verified that this approach is effective for fault diagnosis of rolling element bearings under various operating conditions via experiment and data analysis.