Intelligent Fault Diagnosis Method Using Acoustic Emission Signals for Bearings under Complex Working Conditions

Abstract

Recent convolutional neural network (CNN) models in image processing can be used as feature-extraction methods to achieve high accuracy as well as automatic processing in bearing fault diagnosis. The combination of deep learning methods with appropriate signal representation techniques has proven its efficiency compared with traditional algorithms. Vital electrical machines require a strict monitoring system, and the accuracy of these machines’ monitoring systems takes precedence over any other factors. In this paper, we propose a new method for diagnosing bearing faults under variable shaft speeds using acoustic emission (AE) signals. Our proposed method predicts not only bearing fault types but also the degradation level of bearings. In the proposed technique, AE signals acquired from bearings are represented by spectrograms to obtain as much information as possible in the time–frequency domain. Feature extraction and classification processes are performed by deep learning using EfficientNet and a stochastic line-search optimizer. According to our various experiments, the proposed method can provide high accuracy and robustness under noisy environments compared with existing AE-based bearing fault diagnosis methods.