Integrated ensemble noise-reconstructed empirical mode decomposition for mechanical fault detection

A new branch of fault detection is utilizing the noise such as enhancing, adding or estimating the noise so as to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and extract the fault signatures. Hereinto, ensemble noise-reconstructed empirical mode decomposition (ENEMD) is a novel noise utilization method to ameliorate the mode mixing and denoised the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Despite the possibility of superior performance in detecting weak and multiple faults, the method still suffers from the major problems of the user-defined parameter and the powerless capability for a high SNR case. Hence, integrated ensemble noise-reconstructed empirical mode decomposition is proposed to overcome the drawbacks, improved by two noise estimation techniques for different SNRs as well as the noise estimation strategy. Independent from the artificial setup, the noise estimation by the minimax thresholding is improved for a low SNR case, which especially shows an outstanding interpretation for signature enhancement. For approximating the weak noise precisely, the noise estimation by the local reconfiguration using singular value decomposition (SVD) is proposed for a high SNR case, which is particularly powerful for reducing the mode mixing. Thereinto, the sliding window for projecting the phase space is optimally designed by the correlation minimization. Meanwhile, the reasonable singular order for the local reconfiguration to estimate the noise is determined by the inflection point of the increment trend of normalized singular entropy. Furthermore, the noise estimation strategy, i.e. the selection approaches of the two estimation techniques along with the critical case, is developed and discussed for different SNRs by means of the possible noise-only IMF family. The method is validated by the repeatable simulations to demonstrate the synthetical performance and especially confirm the capability of noise estimation. Finally, the method is applied to detect the local wear fault from a dual-axis stabilized platform and the gear crack from an operating electric locomotive to verify its effectiveness and feasibility.