Vibration signal demodulation and bearing fault detection: A clustering-based segmentation method

The resonance demodulation technique has been widely employed in vibration signal analysis. In order to construct a proper bandpass filter, the prior knowledge, i.e. the resonance frequency band of the mechanical system is required in the traditional demodulation method. However, as the collected vibration signal is often tainted by the background noise and interferences often with unknown frequency contents, it is difficult to identify the center frequency and the bandwidth of the filter. This paper introduces a clustering-based segmentation method to determine these parameters automatically. Envelope analysis is then applied to demodulating the vibration data. According to the simulated cases, the proposed approach is robust to Gaussian noise and interferences. Its effectiveness is further validated by applying it to detect rolling bearing faults based on experimental data.