Diagnosing multiple faults in rotating machinery using empirical mode decomposition and blind source separation methods

It is a challenging task to accurately diagnose multiple faults in a rotating machinery. In this paper, the authors have used empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and blind source separation (BSS) methods for this purpose. A portable rotating machinery setup is made in the laboratory and faults such as bearing inner and outer race faults, angular misalignment are created into it. The vibration data is collected using SPM made LEONOVA DIAMOND(r) FFT analyzer and processed using CONDMASTER RUBY(r) and MATLAB(r) softwares. Firstly, wavelet transform is applied to the signal to denoise it. After this, EMD is implemented to decompose the signal into different intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). After preprocessing these IMFs using the principal component analysis (PCA), BSS is used to extract fault-related information from the IMFs. A comparison of the results obtained from EMD and PCA-BSS is also presented in the paper. Keywords: Rotating machinery, Multiple faults, Vibration data, Wavelet transform, Empirical mode decomposition, Blind source separation, Principal component analysis.