Reliability of Using Characteristic Frequency Components for the Detection and Characterization of Bearing Faults

In this paper, the reliability of using the characteristic frequencies to identify the type of bearing fault is investigated. Three distinct indices are used to quantitatively describe the presence of characteristic frequency components corresponding to Inner Race (ɳI) and Outer Race (ɳO) Failures and Roller Element Defect (ɳR), collectively termed as Relative Power of Characteristic Frequency (RPCF) Index (ɳ).The RPCFs, ɳI, ɳR and ɳO exhibited a 'P' value of 0.1574, 0.2226 and 0.0182, respectively. The method of identifying the fault type from the presence of corresponding characteristic frequency components in the vibration spectrum has serious constraints.