Monitoring Machines by Using a Hybrid Method Combining MED, EMD, and TKEO

Amplitude demodulation is a key for diagnosing bearing faults. The quality of the demodulation determines the efficiency of the spectrum analysis in detecting the defect. A signal analysis technique based on minimum entropy deconvolution (MED), empirical mode decomposition (EMD), and Teager Kaiser energy operator (TKEO) is presented. The proposed method consists in enhancing the signal by using MED, decomposing the signal in intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) and selects only the IMF which presents the highest correlation coefficient with the original signal. In this study the first IMF1 was automatically selected, since it represents the contribution of high frequencies which are first excited at the early stages of degradation. After that, TKEO is used to track the modulation energy. The spectrum is applied to the instantaneous amplitude. Therefore, the character of the bearing faults can be recognized according to the envelope spectrum. The simulation and experimental results show that an envelope spectrum analysis based on MED-EMD and TKEO provides a reliable signal analysis tool. The experimental application has been developed on acoustic emission and vibration signals recorded for bearing fault detection.