Bearing fault identification by higher order energy operator fusion: A non-resonance based approach

• We report a non-resonance based approach to bearing fault detection.
• This is achieved using a higher order energy operator fusion (HOEO_F) method.
• Multiple HOEO’s are fused to process noisy bearing signals.
• The improvements in SNR and SIR via HOEO_F are illustrated.
• The method is validated using both simulated and experimental data.

We report a non-resonance based approach to bearing fault detection. This is achieved by a higher order energy operator fusion (HOEO_F) method. In this method, multiple higher order energy operators are fused to form a single simple transform to process the bearing signal obscured by noise and vibration interferences. The fusion is guided by entropy minimization. Unlike the popular high frequency resonance technique, this method does not require the information of resonance excited by the bearing fault. The effects of the HOEO_F method on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) are illustrated in this paper. The performance of the proposed method in handling noise and interferences has been examined using both simulated and experimental data. The results indicate that the HOEO_F method outperforms both the envelope method and the original energy operator method.