Time-frequency analysis based on ensemble local mean decomposition and fast kurtogram for rotating machinery fault diagnosis

A time-frequency analysis method based on ensemble local mean decomposition (ELMD) and fast kurtogram (FK) is proposed for rotating machinery fault diagnosis. Local mean decomposition (LMD), as an adaptive non-stationary and nonlinear signal processing method, provides the capability to decompose multicomponent modulation signal into a series of demodulated mono-components. However, the occurring mode mixing is a serious drawback. To alleviate this, ELMD based on noise-assisted method was developed. Still, the existing environmental noise in the raw signal remains in corresponding PF with the component of interest. FK has good performance in impulse detection while strong environmental noise exists. But it is susceptible to non-Gaussian noise. The proposed method combines the merits of ELMD and FK to detect the fault for rotating machinery. Primarily, by applying ELMD the raw signal is decomposed into a set of product functions (PFs). Then, the PF which mostly characterizes fault information is selected according to kurtosis index. Finally, the selected PF signal is further filtered by an optimal band-pass filter based on FK to extract impulse signal. Fault identification can be deduced by the appearance of fault characteristic frequencies in the squared envelope spectrum of the filtered signal. The advantages of ELMD over LMD and EEMD are illustrated in the simulation analyses. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed method in fault diagnosis for rotating machinery is demonstrated on gearbox case and rolling bearing case analyses.