2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)
Detection of Bearing Faults in Repetitive Mechanical
Systems by Identification of the Load Torque
Van Trang Phung
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of Siegen
Siegen, Germany
Abstract—This paper deals with a new diagnostic method to
detect bearing faults in repetitive mechanical systems based on a
Fourier series representation of the load torque. A laboratory
setup with a horizontal slider-crank mechanism was built as an
example of such a system. The load torque in the examined
system is estimated and characterized by a periodic function of
the crank angle. The difference between the load torque and the
estimated torque is described by Fourier series whose coefficients
indicate the presence of single-point defects or generalized
roughness fault.
Keywords—diagnosis, bearing faults
I. INTRODUCTION
In a study carried out by General Electric, bearing faults
(BFs) are responsible for up to 40% of all machine failures
[1]. Numerous factors like contamination, corrosion, rolling-
element bearing misalignment, etc., account for boosting up
the bearing failures. The failures can lead to a reduction of the
lifetime and to an increase of cost and maintenance. Therefore,
early bearing damage detection has motivated extensive
investigations.
A usual method for detecting BFs relies on the vibration
measurement on the bearing housing or machine frame [2].
Faulty bearings can increase the machine vibration. The
vibration velocity can be measured by using acceleration
sensors. The rms value of the vibration signal can be used to
categorize the working condition of a bearing to be one of the
four levels based on the ISO 10816 standard [3][4]:
 Level A: new installed systems;
 Level B: continuous operation without maintenance;
 Level C: normal operation is possible but
maintenance should be considered;
 Level D: dangerous vibrations and machine damages
can occur in the future.
The spectrum analysis of the vibration signal is another
approach to detect BFs. As the machine vibration changes
whenever a bearing ball goes through a damaged area, the
spectrum of the vibration signal contains information about
the characteristic fault frequencies corresponding to certain
types of BFs [2][5]. Despite the reliability in detecting BFs,
978-1-5090-1210-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
978-1-5090-1210-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
Mario Pacas
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
University of Siegen
Siegen, Germany
this method has a big disadvantage of using expensive
acceleration sensors.
Therefore, the diagnosis of BFs without the use of
additional sensors has been investigated by several research
groups. One of the approaches is based on the analysis of the
stator currents, which are available in any inverter fed AC-
drive. In [1], the characteristic fault frequencies associated
with the inner and the outer raceway faults are observed in the
stator current spectrum. Generalized roughness fault detection
is introduced in [5] in which an index related to the spectral-
kurtosis energy of the stator currents is used as an indicator of
the fault.
Another diagnosis method is based on frequency response
and presented in [4]. The proposed method has been applied in
non-rigid multi-mass systems. The frequency response of the
system with healthy bearings serves as the baseline and is
compared to faulty lines for the detection of the BFs. This
method does not require any additional sensors. It has been
proven successful in detecting both singe-point defects and
generalized roughness faults.
In this paper, a new approach to diagnose BFs in a
repetitive mechanical system is proposed. As the movement of
a bearing ball over the damaged areas creates load torque
pulses, the spectrum of the load torque contains information
related to the bearing defects. Therefore, the spectrum can
serve as an indicator for the presence of the bearing failures.
The paper is organized as follow: the signatures of the BFs
are presented in section II, section III illustrates the proposed
method which is experimentally validated in section IV.
II. SIGNATURES OF THE BEARING FAULTS
Bearing faults are commonly divided into two main types:
single-point defects and generalized roughness fault [2]. The
former type refers to local damages on one of the four bearing
elements: inner raceway, outer raceway, balls, or cage as
shown in Fig.1. Single-point defects mostly come from the
inner and outer raceways. The defects are characterized by the
fault frequencies defined by (1) and (2) for bearing with
between 6 and 12 balls [1]:
fORF  0.4  z f n (1)
f IRF  0.6  z  f n (2)
 2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

Outer raceway Supposing that the crank is driven at a constant angular

velocity, the load torque demanded by the mechanism includes
Bearing ball
the torque due to the change of moment of inertia (Tinertia ) ,
Cage Coulomb friction (TCoulomb ) , viscous damping (Tviscous ) and
Inner raceway potential energy (Tp ) [6]:

Tload  Tinertia  TCoulomb  Tviscous  Tp (3)

Fig.1. Ball bearing elements
Where fORF and f IRF correspond to the outer and inner
raceway BFs; z is the number of bearing balls; f n is the
rotational frequency of the inner raceway for a fixed outer
raceway.
These characteristic fault frequencies are often used as the
signatures to detect the single-point defects.
The later type, the generalized roughness fault, occurs
when the whole surface of a bearing element degrades
considerably. This type of BFs does not create characteristic
fault frequencies but lead to unpredictable broadband effects
of the measured signals [2][4]. This phenomenon is usually
used to detect bearing faults. In addition, the generalized
roughness fault increases friction inside the faulty bearing
which makes the demanded load torque higher. In this case,
the load torque can provide information about the bearing
failure.
III. DETECTION OF BEARING FAULTS BY FOURIER ANALYSIS OF
THE LOAD TORQUE
A. Load torque estimation in the horizontal slider-crank
mechanism
A horizontal slider-crank mechanism was designed and
installed in the laboratory as an example of repetitive
with
ω  dθ/dt; mc  mslider  0.5mcrod ;λ  r1 / r2 ; k  exc / r2 (4)
follows for the components of the load torque in (3):
Tinertia  0.5mc r12 ω2  sin2θ -0.5λsinθ +1.5λsin3θ + 2k cos2θ  (5)
TCoulomb  Kc r1 sinθ +0.5λsinθ + k cosθ (6)
Tviscous  Kv r12 ω  sinθ +0.5λsinθ + k cosθ 
2
(7)
Tp   mcrank l  0.5lr1  g cosθ (8)
where g is the gravitational acceleration, K c and K v are the
Coulomb and viscous constants.
In the laboratory setup, an electric drive equipped with a
permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) moves the
slider-crank mechanism. If the velocity control of the drive is
properly designed, the reference torque, which is the output of
the speed controller, has the approximate value of the
demanded load torque. Therefore, the reference torque (Tref)
will be used in the following as a good estimate of the load
torque. Equations (3) to (8) show that the load torque is a
periodic function of the crank angle. Hence it can be
described by the discrete Fourier series as follows [7]:
a0 M M

mechanical systems. The mechanical structure and the reduced Tload    ak cos  k θ    bk sin  k θ  (9)
2 k 1 k 1
model of the mechanism are shown in Fig. 2.
N 1
2
crank ak 
N
 T i θ  cos  k iθ  ;
load
(a) i 0
connecting rod N 1
2
slider bk 
N
 T iθ  sin  k iθ  .
i 0
load

Where N is the number of samples in one period, θ = 2π/N .

coupling
The coefficients of the Fourier series (9) have to be
determined by means of measurement and analysis of
y A (b) Tload respectively of Tref . Since Tload is a function of the angular
r1 velocity  , the analysis is carried out by performing
l mcrod identification runs at different angular velocities. The results
Gc Gcrod of these procedures are stored as a function of the angular
mcrank r2 x velocity in look-up tables. Hence, the procedure to build the
 tables with the Fourier coefficients of (9) comprises two steps:
O hc hcrod  exc
 Step 1: the crank is driven at different constant
Potentialsurface angular velocities within its operational
mslider B range  0,ωmax  . In each case, a set of coefficients

Fig.2. Horizontal slider-crank mechanism: a) structure; b) reduced model

 ak , bk  is obtained.
 2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

 Step 2: for each angular velocity the corresponding

Fourier coefficients from the data obtained in Step 1
are stored in a two dimensional look-up table. For the
online calculation of the load torque during the
Healthy bearing
operation of the system, the input of the table is the
crank angular velocity and the outputs are the Fourier Faulty bearing
coefficients of the estimated load torque Test . Linear
interpolation is used for reducing the size of the
tables.
It is necessary to mention that the precision of the crank Fig.5. Horizontal slider-crank mechanism
angle strongly affects the precision of the estimation
algorithm. Therefore, the angle should be corrected during the the screw
estimation. The procedure for estimating the load torque is
illustrated in Fig. 3.

B. The proposed method for the detection of the failures in

the bearings
Fig.4 illustrates the idea behind the proposed method for
the detection of the failures in the bearings. The estimated load
torque Test that is obtained according to the procedure
described above corresponds to a healthy system and is
compared with the actual load toque Tref . Delta torque (T ) ,
i.e. the difference between the load torque and the estimated
torque, is obtained and represented as a Fourier series by using
a FFT algorithm. The Fourier terms related to the cyclical load
torque but not to the characteristic fault frequencies are
ignored according to [8]. For practical purposes, T was
represented in Fourier series with f n  10Hz and by taking a
sample with a ten seconds length. An alternative solution for
the Fourier analysis of the delta torque is using a FFT
algorithm together with a windowing method. Thus, a
commercial oscilloscope equipped with a FFT algorithm can
be used to achieve the spectrum of the delta torque. The main
advantage of the windowing method is the ability to work with
any period of the sampled signals. In the following, these two
methods to process the delta torque are carried out and
compared to show their possibilities to detect the BFs.
a0
Look-up table
(a 0 )
 shaft. The location of the screw was set so that the rms value
 Look-up table ak / bk
(a k ,bk ) Equ(9)

Look-up table a5 / b5
(a 5 ,b5 )

Fig.3. Procedure for the estimation of the load torque
Tref T ci
FFT
i  1, N  1
Test
ck  fORF
Outer racefault
ck  fIRF
Inner racefault
Broad band
Generalized roughness
Fig.4. Procedure of the diagnosis bearing faults method
Fig.6. Bearing with an outer raceway defect
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Fig. 5 shows the slider-crank mechanism equipped with
rolling bearings. The defective bearing was installed on the
load side.
The PMSM driving the mechanism has a rated torque of
M n  4.9 Nm . The machine is fed by an inverter with a
switching frequency of f s  4 kHz . The measurement of the
crank angle is carried out by a 2048 pulses encoder. The
control algorithm and data acquisition are conducted by a high
performance dSPACE 1104 board.
A. Outer raceway fault
Fig. 6 shows a bearing with an artificial defect on the outer
raceway. A screw was inserted into a hole located on top of
the bearing housing. It can go up or down to change the
contact pressure with the bearing balls for getting a desirable
level of fault. An acceleration sensor was mounted on the
bearing housing. The crank was detached from the coupling
Test of the vibration velocity is categorized in level C according to
the ISO 10816 standard while the machine was operating at
1000 min-1, or 16.7 Hz. Fig. 7 illustrates the rms value of the
vibration velocity corresponding to the outer raceway fault.
Fig.8 shows the load torque, the estimated torque and the
delta torque in case of healthy and outer raceway faulty
bearings as time dependent functions. Fig. 9 depicts the
spectral representation of the delta torque T after the FFT.
ignore ci The magenta line corresponds to the Fourier terms associated
related to Tload
with the healthy bearing and acts as the reference line. The
blue line refers to the faulty bearing.
According to (1), the resulting fault frequency is
cj fORF  36 Hz ( 10 Hz was chosen for f n ). At this frequency,
i  1, N  1 Fig. 9 shows a clear difference between the spectra.
Furthermore, the deviations at the multiples of
fORF  72Hz,108Hz... are also indications of the fault.
 2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

Outer raceway faulty bearing Harmonics of the Delta torque

5 0.02
Outer raceway fault
Vibration velocity (mm/s)

0.018 fORF
4 Healthy Bearing
0.016
3 f2ORF
0.014

Coefficient (Nm)
2 0.012 f3ORF

0.01 f4ORF
1
Faulty bearing Healthy bearing 0.008
0
0 2 4 6 8 0.006
time (s)
0.004
Fig.7. Vibration velocity measurement
0.002
Healthy bearing
2.5 0
T ref 36 72 108 144
2 (a) T est Frequency (Hz)
0.8696Nm
T Fig.9. Spectrum of T corresponding to the healthy and the faulty bearings
Torque (Nm)

1.5
DC of T ref The location of the screw was changed until the rms value of
1
the vibration velocity is in the level C according to the ISO
0.5
10816 standard as it is shown in Fig. 11.
The diagnosis procedure is conducted similarly to the
0 diagnosis of the outer raceway defect. According to (2), the
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 characteristic fault frequency is f IRF  54 Hz . Fig. 12 shows
Time (s) the load torque, the estimated torque and the delta torque as
time dependent functions for the case of the inner raceway
Outer raceway fault defect. It also shows the angular position of the crank from
2.5
T ref which the position associated with the highest value of the
2 0.8953Nm (b) load torque can be determined. In Fig. 13, the Fourier
T est spectrum of the delta torque corresponding to the faulty
bearing is depicted in blue in comparison with the magenta
Torque (Nm)

1.5 T
DC of T ref reference spectrum. It can be observed that in addition to the
1 characteristic fault frequency and it multiples:

0.5
k
f IRF  k  f IRF , k  N * (11)

0 There are sidebands around these frequencies with the

sideband width of f SB  f n  10 Hz . The sideband frequencies
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Time (s) are given by:

Fig.8. Load torque as time dependent function: a) Healthy bearing; b) Outer f SBk  k  f IRF  if SB , k  N * , i  Z * (12)
raceway faulty bearing

Generally, the signatures to detect the outer raceway fault Theshaft

can be observed at frequencies defined by:
Thescrew
k
fORF  k  fORF , k  N * (10) Thegap

B. Inner raceway fault

In further experiments the case of an inner raceway defect
was researched. Fig. 10 depicts an artificial defective bearing.
The screw can move inside a hole in the coupling shaft to Fig.10. Bearing with an inner raceway defect
achieve a desirable inner raceway defect. A gap of 6.5mm of
the circumference of the inner raceway was removed to make
sure that the screw could contact the bearing balls.
 2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

Inner raceway faulty bearing fault frequency f IRF is modulated by the mechanical rotational
5 frequency f n . As the fault intensity reaches the highest values
twice per mechanical revolution (at the two aforementioned
4 positions), the values of the coefficients corresponding to
Velocity (mm/s)

i  2 (or more generally at any even values of i ) are higher

3 than those corresponding to other sideband frequencies.
2
C. Generalized roughness fault
1 To create a generalized roughness fault, some corundum
Healthy bearing Faulty bearing was used to contaminate the bearing. This very hard material
0 destroys the surface of the raceways and bearing balls. As it is
0 2 4 6 8
shown in Fig. 14, a hole on the outer raceway and a hole on
time (s)
the bearing housing were created to make a path through
Fig.11. Vibration velocity measurement which the corundum can enter the bearing.
Inner race faulty bearing The results achieved by conducting the diagnosis method
2.5 including the vibration velocity, the load torque and the
6 o'clock 0.8661Nm T ref
spectrum of the delta torque are shown in Fig. 15, Fig. 16, and
2 18 o'clock T est Fig. 17, respectively.
T
Torque (Nm)

1.5
crank /3
1 DC of T ref
0.5

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 Fig.14. Bearing for simulating a generalized roughness fault
Time (s) Generalized roughness faulty bearing
Fig.12. Load torque as time dependent function and angular position of the 5
crank in case of an inner raceway fault
4
Harmonics of the Delta torque
Velocity (mm/s)

0.02
f1IRF Inner raceway fault 3
0.018 Healthy Bearing
f2,-2 2
0.016 SB f2IRF
0.014 1
Coefficient value (Nm)

f1,-2 f2,2
SB
SB f1,2
0.012 SB Faulty baring Healthy bearing
0
0 2 4 6 8
0.01 f2,-1
f1,-1
SB f1,1 SB time (s)
SB
0.008 f2,1
SB
Fig.15. Vibration velocity measurement
0.006 Generailized roughness bearing
2.5
0.004 T ref
0.002 2 T est
0.9655 Nm
T
Torque (Nm)

0 1.5
24 34 44 54 64 74 88 98 108 118 128 138 148 DC of T ref
Frequency (Hz) 1
Fig.13. Spectrum analysis of the delta torque
0.5
As explained in [9] the sidebands are caused by the load
zone effect. In the horizontal slider-crank mechanism, the load 0
torque applied to the bearing reaches the highest value when
the crank stands at the position 6 o’clock and the second 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
highest value at 18 o’clock, as shown in Fig. 12. The defect on Time (s)
the inner raceway rotates through the load zone once per Fig.16. Load torque as time dependent function in case of a generalized
revolution. This characteristic results in a phenomenon that the roughness fault
 2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

Generalized roughness bearing be seen that there are no considerable differences between the
0.02 two speed responses so the mechanism with the faulty bearing
0.018
G-Roughness Bearing still works properly.
Healthy Bearing
0.016 D. Spectrum analysis by using FFT with windowing
0.014 In this method, the delta torque is interpolated by using a
Coefficient value (Nm)

FFT function from an oscilloscope. The Fourier spectra of the

0.012 healthy, the inner and the outer raceways faulty bearings are
0.01
depicted in Fig. 19 (a), (b), (c) respectively. The conditions of
the bearings are similar to those presented in section IV.B and
0.008 IV.C.
0.006 The crank was driven at 60 min-1, or f n  1 Hz . From (1),
0.004 the characteristic fault frequency fORF  3.6 Hz . The Fourier
spectrum corresponding to the healthy bearing as shown in
0.002
Fig. 19(a) serves as the baseline for comparison to defective
0 lines. Fig. 19(b) clearly shows large differences between the
0 24 36 55 72 88 108 128 144 two lines at fORF and its multiples. This phenomenon is
Frequency (Hz)
similar to that as illustrated in Fig. 9.
Fig.17. Spectrum of the T corresponding to the healthy and faulty bearings
For the inner raceway defect, f IRF  5.4 Hz is computed
Speed response
70 according to (2). Fig. 19(c) shows that the coefficient related
to f IRF and its multiples are larger than those in the baseline.
65

60 c 2Hz 4Hz
n (min-1 )

(a)
55 3Hz 5Hz

1Hz
50
Set point
7Hz 12Hz 16Hz
45 Faulty bearing 9Hz 14Hz
6Hz 8Hz 11Hz 13Hz 15Hz
Healthy bearing 10Hz
40
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 O Frequency (1.25Hz/Div) f
Time (s)
Fig.18. Speed responses
c
Fig. 8a shows that the DC component of the load torque (b)
corresponding to the healthy bearing is 0.8696 Nm. Fig. 16 3.6Hz 7.2Hz
illustrates that the DC component belonging to the generalized 10.8Hz
roughness bearing is 0.9655 Nm that exhibits an increase of
11% when compared to the healthy case. The larger DC
component is mainly due to the higher friction inside the
defective bearing. The DC component related to the outer and
inner raceways defects are 0.8953 Nm (difference of 2.9%) O Frequency (1.25Hz/Div) f
and 0.8661 Nm (difference of 0.4%), see Fig. 8b and Fig. 12.
As expected, the increase of the DC component in case of a
generalized roughness fault is much more significant than in c
5.4Hz
case of single-point defects. 8.8Hz (c)
10.8Hz
The broadband change caused by the generalized 7.4Hz 12.8Hz
3.4Hz
roughness fault is visible in Fig. 17. The spectral line
corresponding to the frequency f  36 Hz is higher than 14.8Hz

others because of the effect of the hole on the outer raceway.

This hole can be considered as a mild outer raceway fault.
However, the multiples of f  36 Hz are not observed, so it O Frequency (1.25Hz/Div) f
cannot be classified as an outer raceway fault. To make sure
that the system was not affected by the corundum, the angular Fig. 19. Delta torque (blue line) and its Fourier coefficients (green
velocity was measured for a healthy and for a faulty bearing. line): a) Healthy bearing; b) Outer raceway fault; c) Inner raceway
Fig. 18 shows the crank angular velocity in both cases. It can fault.
 2016 IEEE 8th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC-ECCE Asia)

In addition, the sideband effect is also visibly recognized, REFERENCES

especially at frequencies corresponding to i  2 in (12). It can
be concluded that the windowing method also provides
promising solution for the detection of the bearing faults.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper introduced a new method to detect bearing
faults in repetitive mechanical systems by analyzing the
Fourier spectrum of the load torque. The diagnosis method
does not require additional sensors since the load torque can
be estimated during the operation of the systems.
Experimental results showed that the proposed method is
capable of detecting both single-point defects and generalized
roughness fault. Until now the diagnosis was carried out off
line. However, the today available computing capability in
embedded systems allows an online calculation of the FFT and
so a continuous monitoring of the mechanical system. In
addition, the ongoing work considers the application of the
developed procedure in an encoderless drive.
APPENDIX
Horizontal slider-crank mechanism
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Symbols mcrank mcrod mslider r1 r2 exc l

0.345 0.229 4.295 0.05 0.34 0.03 0.0135
Value
kg kg kg m m m m

Driving PMSM: SDM 101 – 005N8:

Rated plate: 360V, 150 Hz 3000 rpm, 1.49 kW, 0.0006 kgm2