Compound faults detection of the rolling element bearing based on the optimal complex Morlet wavelet filter

Wavelet filter is widely used in extracting fault features embedded in the noisy vibration signal, especially the complex Morlet wavelet. In most occasions, the filter parameters are optimized adaptively with a suitable objective function. And then, with the Hilbert transform demodulation analysis, the single localized fault in rolling element bearings can be detected. To extend it for compound faults detection, a novel index deduced from the different intervals of the prominent bearing fault frequencies and subsequent harmonics in the envelope spectrum is proposed. By maximizing the ratio of correlated kurtosis to kurtosis of the envelope spectrum amplitudes of the filtered signal, the optimal complex Morlet wavelet filters corresponding to the different faults are designed by the particle filtering method, respectively. Two cases of real signals are analyzed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, which include one case of experiment signal with artificial outer race fault coupled with roller fault, as well as one case of engineering data with outer race fault coupled with inner race fault. Furthermore, some comparisons with a previous method are also conducted. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the method in compound faults diagnosis of the rolling element bearings.