Original article

Proc IMechE Part C:

J Mechanical Engineering Science
Adaptive variational mode decomposition 0(0) 1–20
! IMechE 2015

based on artificial fish swarm algorithm Reprints and permissions:

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for fault diagnosis of rolling bearings DOI: 10.1177/0954406215623311

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Jun Zhu, Chao Wang, Zhiyong Hu, Fanrang Kong

and Xingchen Liu

Abstract
The bearing fault diagnosis is of vital significance in maintaining the safety of rotation machine. Among various fault
detection techniques, the diagnosis based on vibration signal is widely applied in monitoring the condition of rotation
machine. Variational mode decomposition (VMD) is a novel signal analysis method, which can decompose a multi-
component signal into a certain number of band-limited intrinsic mode functions (BLIMFs) nonrecursively. VMD could
overcome some problems such as mode mixing, the inference of noise, the determination of wavelet base, which exist in
empirical mode decomposition, ensemble empirical mode decomposition, wavelet transform, respectively. However, the
empirical selection of the parameters for VMD would affect the result of the decomposition. This paper presents an
adaptive VMD method with parameter optimization for detecting the localized faults of rolling bearing. Kurtosis, sensitive
to transient impulsive components, is employed as optimization index to evaluate the performance of the VMD. Two
parameters in the VMD, namely the number of decomposition modes and data-fidelity constraint, are optimized syn-
chronously based on the kurtosis index through artificial fish swarm algorithm. Executing VMD with the acquired
parameters, the optimal BLIMF is obtained. The spectrum analysis of the optimal BLIMF could identify the characteristic
frequency caused by the localized crack effectually. The validity of the proposed method is proved by means of a cyclic
transient impulse response signal and two experiments with practical vibration signals of rolling bearings. Compared to
several existing methods, the proposed method demonstrates reinforced results.

Keywords
Adaptive variational mode decomposition, parameters optimization, kurtosis index, rolling bearing, fault diagnosis

Date received: 24 July 2015; accepted: 5 November 2015

an adaptive decomposition technique, which decom-

Introduction
Rotary machinery, featuring various mechanical
equipments such as motors, shafts, bearings, and
gears, plays an important role in lots of industrial
fields. The rolling bearing is one of the most import-
ant components in rotary machinery equipments.1–3
The operation state of bearing has influences on the
function of the whole machine. Therefore, fault detec-
tion is of great significance in the maintenance of
equipment and prevention of possible accidents. Due
to the fact that the environment of the bearing is quite
complex in reality,4,5 the inference from the back-
ground noise is involved in the acquired vibration
signal. Revealing the fault feature effectively from
the complicated environment poses a great challenge
to the bearing fault diagnosis.6–8
Several methods have been put forward to extract
the fault signature from rolling bearing signals.
Among the various candidates, empirical mode
decomposition (EMD) proposed by Huang et al.9 is
poses a nonstationary signal into almost orthogonal
components called intrinsic mode function (IMF).10,11
Although the fault feature could be obtained from
these IMFs, EMD has some limitations like sensitivity
to noise and mode mixing. To overcome the problem
of mode mixing existing in EMD, ensemble empirical
mode decomposition (EEMD) is raised, which takes
advantage of white noise to obtain the true IMF com-
ponents through repeated decomposition and aver-
aging.12,13 EEMD can restrain mode mixing of
EMD at a certain level; however, the amount of cal-
culation grows and the completeness loses because the
Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation,
University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
Corresponding author:
Fanrang Kong, Department of Precision Machinery and Precision
Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei,
Anhui 230026, China.
Email: kongfr@ustc.edu.cn

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2 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
white noise cannot be neutralized completely. Wavelet
transform (WT) is verified to be a very effective
method to extract bearing fault information, which
could realize the purpose of multi-scale refinement
for time and frequency by means of stretching and
translating operations.14,15 Nevertheless, WT has
some inevitable deficiencies, including the selection
of wavelet base, the inflexible band limits and
border distortion.
Variational mode decomposition (VMD) is a newly
developed technique for signal decomposition, which is
first proposed in Dragomiretskiy and Zosso.16 VMD can
realize the purpose of decomposing a multi-component
signal into a certain number of band-limited intrinsic
mode functions (BLIMFs) nonrecursively. Owing to its
firm relations to the Wiener filter, VMD is robust in
processing the signal when noise exists in the signal.
Moreover, the variational model could determine the
relevant bands adaptively and evaluate the correspond-
ing modes synchronously so that errors between them
are appropriately balanced.
Some researchers have applied VMD in many
engineering domains. For example, Lahmiri17 utilized
VMD as a multi-resolution technique in ECG signal
de-noising to overcome some of the limits of EMD.
VMD is introduced to detect multiple signatures
caused by rotor-to-stator rubbing by Wang et al.18
and the result showed better performance than
EEMD and EMD. Mohanty et al.19 introduced
VMD to bearing fault analysis, and observed the
fault from the fluctuation of vibration intensity and
the distribution in the frequency of the decomposed
signals, meanwhile indicated the presence of the flaw
from the energy level of the decomposed signals.
However, the signal processing utilizing VMD in
papers mentioned above suffers from the problem of
predefining the number of modes and the parameter
of the data-fidelity constraint, which restricts the wide
application in practical engineering situations. What’s
more, denoting the occurrence of the defect from
energy level in Mohanty et al.19 is not reliable when
the noise and interference are involved.
Based on the present situation and difficulties for
VMD empirically to decompose the signal for fault
diagnosis, an adaptive strategy of VMD to obtain
the optimal BLIMF is presented in this paper.
Kurtosis is employed as evaluation index to judge
the performance of the VMD. The parameters in
VMD referring to the number of the decomposition
modes and data-fidelity constraint are optimized sim-
ultaneously based on the kurtosis index through arti-
ficial fish swarm algorithm (AFSA). The best BLIMF
for bearing diagnosis is acquired through VMD with
the optimal parameters. Thus, the characteristic fre-
quency caused by the localized defect is successfully
detected. The proposed method takes the advantage
of VMD to effectively decompose the signal into a
series of BLIMFs, thus certain BLIMF containing
the fault information is acquired. What’s more, by
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utilizing AFSA to acquire the optimal parameters
adaptively, it overcomes the disadvantage of VMD
selecting parameters subjectively.
Conventional parameter search method, which also
refers to traversal method, has relatively slow conver-
gence speed in optimizing parameters. Since the effect
of VMD relies on some parameters, this paper
employs AFSA to search the global maximum effect-
ively and efficiently. AFSA is firstly proposed by Li
et al.20 Enlightened by biological behaviors of fish in
foraging, huddling and following, food is foraged
based on its own way by each artificial fish. Superior
to optimization algorithms like ant colony optimiza-
tion (ACO) for ants looking for a path between their
settlement and a source of food,21 genetic algorithm
(GA) for natural selection22 and particle swarm opti-
mization (PSO) for predatory behavior of birds,23 the
AFSA could quickly find the global maximum with the
advantages of fast convergence speed, tolerance to ini-
tial values, parameter setting and strong robustness in
practice.20,24–26 Thus, the AFSA is preferable to opti-
mize the parameters in the VMD.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The
fundamental theories of the proposed adaptive VMD
method are presented in ‘‘Theoretical background’’
section. The following section introduces the pro-
posed adaptive VMD method based on the AFSA.
A simulation study is conducted to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed method in the later sec-
tion. ‘‘Experimental verification’’ presents experimen-
tal verification tests utilizing defective rolling bearing
with outer-race and inner-race defect. Finally, conclu-
sions and future works are drawn in the last section.
Theoretical background
Variational mode decomposition
VMD is a newly developed method for quasi-orthogo-
nal signal decomposition,16 which could nonrecursively
achieve the goal of decomposing a multi-component
signal xðtÞ into a number of quasi-orthogonal intrinsic
mode functions uk . These sub-signals uk possess certain
sparse properties of its bandwidth in the spectrum
domain. Tight around a center pulsation wk , the band-
width of each mode is evaluated utilizing H1 Gaussian
smoothness of the transformed signal. The constrained
variational problem can be described as follows
( )
X  j
 
min jj@t ðtÞ þ  uk ðtÞ e jwk t 2
jj2
fuk g, fwk g
k
t
X
subject to uk ¼ x
k
ð1Þ
where fuk g :¼ fu1 , . . . , uK g and fwk g :¼ fw1 , . . . , wK g are
shorthand marks for the collection of all modes and
their
P P central frequencies, separately. Equally,
:¼ K k¼1 is comprehended as the sum of all modes.
k
Zhu et al. 3

Equation (1) could be solved by employing a quad-

ratic penalty and Lagrangian multipliers, which makes
the problem unconstrained. As a classic way to pro-
mote reconstruction fidelity, the quadratic penalty
functions well in the presence of additive Gaussian
noise. Lagrangian multipliers are a common way of
enforcing constrains sternly. The combination of the
two terms therefore benefits both from the sound con-
vergence characteristics of the quadratic penalty at the
finite weight and the strict enforcement of the con-
straint by the Lagrangian multiplier. The augmented
Lagrangian is provided as below

Lðfuk g, fwk g, lÞ
X  j
 
¼ jj@t ðtÞ þ  uk ðtÞ ejwk t jj22 þ jjxðtÞ
k
t
* +
X X
2
 uk ðtÞjj2 þ lðtÞ, xðtÞ  uk ðtÞ
k k
ð2Þ

in which  represents the data-fidelity constraint.

The original minimization problem (1) can be
solved by alternate direction method of multipliers
(ADMM), which refers to finding the saddle point
of the augmented Lagrangian in a sequence of itera-
tive sub-optimizations.27,28 The flowchart of ADMM
optimization algorithm is shown in Figure 1. In this
figure, u1k means the initial iteration of each mode uk ,
w1k refers to initial iteration of center pulsation wk , l1
represents the initial iteration of Lagrangian multipliers
l, n denotes the iteration number, k is the index of cer- Figure 1. Flowchart of ADMM optimization algorithm for VMD.
tain mode. unþ1k means the ðn þ 1Þth iteration of each
mode uk , wnþ1
k implies the ðn þ 1Þth iteration of center (B) Minimization with regard to wk
pulsation wk , ln stands for the nth iteration of
Lagrangian multipliers l, K is the number of modes to
be decomposed,  refers to time-step of the dual ascent, x R1
means the original signal, and " indicates the tolerance of u k ðwÞj2 dw
wjb
convergence criterion. wnþ1
k ¼ R0 1 ð4Þ
u k ðwÞj2 dw
0 jb
VMD takes the advantage of ADMM optimization
algorithm to generate different decomposed modes Equation (4) puts the new wk at the center of gravity
and center frequency during each transforming oper- of the corresponding mode’s power spectrum.
ation. The solutions to the respective sub-problems Plugging the solutions of the sub-optimizations into
are as follows. the ADMM algorithm and directly optimizing in
Fourier domain where proper, we acquire the complete
(A) Minimization with regard to uk algorithm which is shown in Figure 2. In the Figure 2,
u nþ1
b nþ1
k ðwÞ, ðwÞ mean the expression of uk , x in spectral
All the modes acquired from solutions in spectrum domain, respectively,  represents balancing parameter
domain are written as of the data-fidelity constraint, w denotes the frequency.
The complete algorithm of the VMD in detail can
P b be referred to Dragomiretskiy and Zosso.16
b
xðwÞ  i6¼k b
u i ðwÞ þ lðwÞ
2
u nþ1
b k ðwÞ ¼ ð3Þ
1 þ 2ðw  wk Þ2
The discussion of parameters involved in the VMD
Equation (3) is clearly recognized as a wiener filtering In VMD algorithm, parameters like the number of
of the current residual with signal prior 1=ðw  wk Þ2 . modes to be decomposed K, the balancing parameter
Therefore, wiener filtering is implanted in the VMD of the data-fidelity constraint , time-step of the dual
algorithm that makes it much more robust to noise. ascent  and how to initialize center frequencies of all

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4 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
Figure 2. Flowchart of complete optimization algorithm of
VMD.
the modes init have influences on the performance of
the VMD output. Center frequencies of all the modes
are initialized in two ways: the uniform distribution
and zero. Wang et al.18 considered that in spite of the
slight different equivalent filter bank properties result-
ing from the two ways of initialization of center fre-
quency, the similar decomposition results will be
realized utilizing VMD in practical applications.
Dragomiretskiy and Zosso16 argued that if exact
reconstruction is not the purpose, particularly under
the situation of (strong) noise that should not be con-
tained in the decomposition, taking advantage of the
quadratic penalty only while abandoning the
Largangian multiplier would be the suitable choice.
Dragomiretskiy and Zosso16 and Mohanty et al.19
said that the typical selection of K and  affect the
outcome of VMD. When K is predefined smaller, one
of the modes is either shared by adjacent modes (
small), or mostly discarded ( big and no Lagrangian
multipliers). On the other hand, when K is over-
binned, the decomposition effect would look like
this: for small , one or several additional modes
would greatly contain noise. While for big , signifi-
cant parts of the spectrum are shared by two or more
different modes and their center frequencies overlap.
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Therefore, we make the parameter  to be zero,
which means that the Lagrangian multiplier is effect-
ively shut off. The parameter init is set to be one,
which suggests center frequencies of all the modes
are initialized in the uniform distribution.
Parameters K and  which have significant influences
on the decomposition result are optimized to acquire
the most suitable ones in this paper.
Kurtosis criterion
Kurtosis is a dimensionless parameter which often
describes how peaked or flat a distribution is. It has
been proved to be very powerful in detecting transient
impulsive components in the field of rotary machinery
diagnostics. Suppose yðtÞ ¼ ½ y1 , y2 , . . . , yN  is the
result of certain BLIMF after performing VMD.
Then mathematical expression of kurtosis is given as
Eð y  Þ4
kurtosis ¼ ð5Þ
4
where  is the mean value of y and  is the standard
deviation of y. When the signal is about normally
distributed, the kurtosis value is about 3. However,
the kurtosis value increases significantly if many
impact components are involved in the signal. As
the localized faults of rolling bearing occurs, vibration
resulting from shock deviates from the normal distri-
bution dramatically. The greater the kurtosis value is,
the higher proportion the impulse signal possesses.
The fault information of bearing is often included in
the amplitude modulated signal which contains more
impulse components.
Artificial fish swarm algorithm
In this subsection, parallel optimization algorithm
based on the AFSA is introduced. In view of simu-
lated behavior of groups of fish, the behavior of a
group of artificial fish (AF) would be built based on
a single AF. The global optimum is acquired after
local optimum is found and transferred in the
system. The typical behaviors of an AF include for-
aging, huddling and following. The next action of an
AF relies on its present state and those of its environ-
mental AFs by sense organs, and also influences the
activities of other AFs. Assume the present state of a
fish swarm is P ¼ ½ p1 , p2 , . . . , pL , where L is the
number of the fish swarm and pi ¼ ½Ki ; i 
ði ¼ 1, 2, . . . , LÞ is the vector of parameters to be opti-
mized. The food concentration of the position pi can
be expressed as
Yi ¼ kurtosisðpi Þ ð6Þ
The distance between the ith and jth individual AF is
di,j ¼ k pi  pj k. Visual, Step, and  denote the per-
ceiving range, the step range and the congestion factor
Zhu et al.
of the artificial fish, respectively. The following
describes the details of AFSA. It is necessary to
notice that the activity of a fish should not exceed
the range of its living pond, i.e. the variation range
of parameters LBUB, and parameters K and  are
constrained to positive integer.
1. Foraging behavior: This is the most fundamental
behavior of a fish and is to trend food spontan-
eously through vision or taste perceiving the food
concentration in water. For the ith AF, its current
position is pi , pv is a position in its visual filed
randomly generated by
pv ¼ pi þ r  Visual ð7Þ
where r is a random number between 1 and 1. In
the maximum problem, if Yv 4 Yi , i.e. the food
Figure 3. Flowchart of the AFSA.
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5
concentration is higher at pv than at pi , this AF
will move a small distance toward pv . Otherwise,
the AF will select a position pv at random again
and determine whether it meets the demand of the
forward condition. If it could not be met after
try number times, it swims a bit randomly. The
step movement abides the rule below
 pv pi
piþ1 ¼pi þStep
kpv pi k
ðYv 4 Yi Þ
piþ1 ¼pi þrStep ðYv 4Yi Þ ð8Þ
2. Huddling behavior: As a member of fish swarm,
an AF always tends to swim toward the area with
most fishes. For an AF at the position pi , suppose
nf companions exist in its visual filed, the center
position of these AFs’ present positions (including
pi ) is pc . If Yc =nf 4 Yi , it means that it is not too
6 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

crowded and enough food exists in the center of problem we will solve and then a proper behavior
the fish colony, Mathematical expression of the is selected to stimulate. Three biological behaviors
huddling behavior is as follows of fish swarm, namely foraging behavior, huddling
 behavior and following behavior are observed and
p p
piþ1 ¼pi þStepkpc pi k ðYc =nf 4 Yi and nf 51Þ analyzed in this study.
c i
piþ1 ¼Formulað8Þ ðYc =nf 4Yi or nf ¼0Þ ð9Þ
5. Bulletin update: The AF’s optimal status and
the optimal value of the issue are recorded by bul-
3. Following behavior: Assume pi is the present pos- letin. After movements are carried out, every AF
ition of AF, there are nf companions in its visual updates and contrasts its own status with the bul-
filed, the position with the highest food concentra- letin. The value on the bulletin will be substituted
tion among them is pm . If Ym =nf 4 Yi , it implies if its present status of AF is better.
the position pm has higher food density and is not 6. Termination determination: The terminal condi-
too crowded as well. Mathematical expression of tion of the algorithm can be based on the feature
following behavior is described as of the issue or the demand. For example, the
common method is to let the mean square devi-
 p p ation of several repeated values less than the
piþ1 ¼pi þStepkpm pi k ðYm =nf 4 Yi and nf 51Þ
m i
piþ1 ¼Formulað8Þ ðYm =nf 4Yi or nf ¼0Þ ð10Þ accepted error, or to evaluate the number of arti-
ficial fish in an area reaches a certain ratio, or to
limit the maximum number of iterations.
4. Behavior evaluation: The artificial fish in the pre-
sent environment is evaluated based on the The flowchart of the AFSA is given in Figure 3,
where the main procedures are described as follows:

1. Set the parameters of AFSA, including the

number of the fish swarm L, the variation range
of parameters LBUB, the fish visual range Visual,
the maximum moving step length of a fish Step,
the trying number of foraging behavior
try number, the maximum generation number
Maxgen, and the crowd factor . Define the
objective function as Y ¼ f ð pÞ ¼ kurtosisð pÞ.
2. Initialize the original status of fish swarm by
random generation between the variation range.
Establish a bulletin to record the best position
pbest of fish swarm and the largest value of object-
ive function Ybest at each generation.
3. Each AF tries the suitable behavior according to
the regulations mentioned above. Update the bul-
letin to record the optimal parameter values and
maximum kurtosis at each iteration.
4. Repeat the iteration until it meets the termination
condition. The pbest at final iteration is adopted as
the optimal parameters.

Proposed method for bearing

Figure 4. Fault diagnostic scheme of bearings based on the fault diagnosis
proposed method.
VMD: variational mode decomposition; AFSA: artificial fish The problem to be addressed and the critical tech-
swarm algorithm; BLIMF: band-limited intrinsic mode function. niques to address the problem have been proposed

Table 1. Parameter values of AFSA for the proposed method in bearing fault diagnosis.

Parameter L LBUB Visual Step try number Maxgen 

     
1 10 5 1
Value 10 1 20 0.618
100 2000 500 10

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Zhu et al. 7

in the section above. This section presents an adaptive
VMD method based on AFSA to address the men-
tioned problem, which is the highlight of this paper
for fault diagnosis of bearing. The localized fault sig-
nature of bearing is generally manifested as cyclical
transient impulses in the waveform of the vibration
signal. The recurrence frequency of the impacts is
called fault characteristic frequency (FCF). At the
same time, the resonant frequencies of the bearing
would be excited, causing a modulating phenom-
enon.29 FCF can be identified by the demodulation
method based on the Hilbert transform (HT).
Nevertheless, the envelope result is usually not satis-
factory due to the noise. A band-pass filter is
employed to enhance the performance of the HT to
demodulate the transient impulses, whereas the selec-
tion of a proper filter is a research point itself.30
Under this circumstance, VMD, which is actually a
generalization of the classic Wiener filter into multiple
and adaptive bands, is introduced to solve the prob-
lem mentioned above. However, the signal processing
utilizing VMD in existing papers17–19 needs to select
parameters for VMD empirically, which is subjective
and will restrict effective fault diagnosis in engineering

Figure 5. Transient impulse signal and its envelope analysis: (a) the constructed signal with cyclical impulses; (b) contaminated signal;
(c) envelope spectrum of the contaminated signal.

Figure 6. (a) Iteration process of the AFSA; (b) time consuming for two parameter search methods.
AFSA: artificial fish swarm algorithm.

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8 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

practice. In order to achieve the goal of detecting fault decompose a nonstationary signal into a series of
adaptively, we apply AFSA to acquire the optimal BLIMFs effectively, without mode mixing and
parameters for VMD based on the kurtosis index. insensitive to noise. Moreover, the proposed method
The proposed method takes advantage of VMD to could overcome the problem of selecting parameters

Figure 7. Processing results of simulation signal by utilizing different methods: (a) empirical parameter selection method; (b) EMD-
based envelope method; (c) EEMD-based envelope method; (d) DWT-based envelope method; (e) proposed adaptive VMD method.

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Zhu et al.
empirically through AFSA with the merits of fast con-
vergence speed and strong robustness in practice.
According to the analysis above, we present a fault
diagnostic scheme of bearing based on the proposed
method, which is shown in Figure 4. The main steps
are given as follows:
1. Vibration signal is acquired from the running
faulty rolling bearing.
2. Two parameters K and  are parallel searched and
optimized by AFSA through kurtosis index, with
the AFSA parameters listed in Table 1 both for
simulation and experimental analysis.
3. The optimized parameters are sent to VMD to
acquire the optimal BLIMF.
Figure 8. The bearing test platform from CWRU.
Figure 9. (a) Original outer-race defective signal; (b) envelope spectrum.
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9
4. Address envelope spectrum analysis on the optimal
BLMF, find the strongest frequency in the spectrum,
and identify whether there is one characteristic fre-
quency close to the detected frequency.
Simulation study
In order to validate the effectiveness of the presented
adaptive VMD method, a testing signal including
periodically impulses and white Gaussian is simu-
lated. Because the vibration signal caused by localized
defect represents to be amplitude modulated, the
simulated signal is constructed as31
hðtÞ ¼ emod ðt,T0 Þ sinð2  fn  tÞ þ wgnðtÞ ð11Þ
where damping coefficient  ¼ 1200, mod is the
remainder function, the period of the repetitive
impulses T0 ¼ 0.01 s, carrier frequency fn ¼ 2000 Hz,
sampling frequency fs ¼ 12,000 Hz, wgnðtÞ is the white
Gaussian white noise sequence with certain intensity.
The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the simulation
signal is 10 dB. The uncontaminated periodical
impulses, the polluted simulated signal containing
white Gaussian noise and the envelope spectrum of
the contaminated signal are illustrated in Figure 5(a)
to (c), respectively. It is clear that the impact signature
is buried by noise in the time domain. Envelope ana-
lysis could not give the characteristic frequency effect-
ively because of the noise.
10
We analyze the noisy signal utilizing the proposed
method. The iteration process of the AFSA is given in
Figure 6(a). It can be found that the global maximum
of the kurtosis value is quickly found by the AFSA.
The optimal parameters are finally determined as
K ¼ 10,  ¼ 178. Because there are two parameters
K and  that need to be searched, the conventional
method in this paper is as follows: Firstly, the first
layer searching range K is defined as 2–10 and its
step is 1. Then, the second layer searching range  is
defined as 100–2000 and its step is 10. Finally, under
this setting, the object function is searched to get the
maximum kurtosis with two global optimal values.
The selections of searching range and step are related
to specific signal. Figure 6(b) displays the time con-
suming comparison between the conventional param-
eter search method and the AFSA. It is obvious that
the AFSA has distinct advantage over the conven-
tional parameter search method (with AMD
Phenom (tm) X4 Processor 3.40 GHz, RAM: 3.0
Table 2. The geometry of the tested bearing.
Inside diameter Outside diameter Thickness
(in) (in) (in)
0.9843 2.0472 0.5906
Table 3. The fault-associated information for the bearing.
Size of the fault
Fault location (DW) (in)
Outer raceway 0.0110.007
Inner raceway 0.0110.007
Figure 10. (a) Iteration process of the AFSA; (b) time consuming for two parameter search methods.
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Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
GB, and processed in Matlab). Figure 7(e) displays
the optimal BLIMF4 and the envelope spectrum uti-
lizing the proposed method. The frequency f0 having
the highest value in the envelope spectrum is 99.66 Hz,
which is very close to the pre-defined value 100 Hz.
For comparison, empirical parameter selection
method, EMD method, EEMD method and wavelet
spectrum method are applied to analyze the simulation
signal as well. As seen from Figure 7(a), the frequency
f0 is not the most dominate value for the empirical
parameter selection method. From Figure 7(b), the
second IMF of simulation signal is picked up after
EMD, the frequency f0 the envelope spectrum cannot
be clearly identified because of mode mixing. As for the
EEMD method in Figure 7(c), envelope spectrum of
the second IMF still fails to detect the frequency f0
because the noise contained in the original signal is
very strong. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is
applied to decompose the simulation onto the level 5
and Daubechies 4 is chosen as the mother wavelet
Ball diameter Pitch diameter Number of
(in) (in) rolling elements
0.3126 1.537 9
Rotating Fault characteristic
speed (r/min) frequencies (Hz)
1773 105.9
1772 159.9
Zhu et al. 11

Figure 11. Processing results of outer-race fault signal by utilizing different methods: (a) empirical parameter selection method;
(b) EMD-based envelope method; (c) EEMD-based envelope method; (d) DWT-based envelope method; (e) proposed adaptive
VMD method.

when performing DWT.32 The detail coefficients d2 is with almost the same amplitude as f0 so that we have
processed by envelope spectrum. From the result in trouble in detecting the frequency f0 . Therefore, the
Figure 7(d), the frequency f0 can be recognized. proposed method demonstrates evident advantages
However, several higher disturbance frequencies exist over empirical parameter selection method, EMD,

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12
Figure 12. (a) Original inner-race defective signal; (b) envelope spectrum.
Figure 13. (a) Iteration process of the AFSA; (b) time consuming for two-parameter search methods.
AFSA: artificial fish swarm algorithm.
EEMD, and DWT method in extracting fault feature
from the noisy signal.
Thus, the simulation signal testifies the effective-
ness and advantage of the proposed adaptive VMD
method.
Experimental verification
In this section, we first analyze the bearing data from
Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) Bearing
Data Center Website,33 and then the bearing data
measured from the fault bearing type of NJ208
(TMB) are also investigated.
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Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
Bearing data from CWRU
The experimental data acquisition platform, contain-
ing a 2hp induction motor (left), a torque transducer/
encoder (center), a load motor (right), and control
electronics (not known), is illustrated in Figure 8.
Accelerometers are utilized to collect the vibration
signal, with a sampling frequency of 12,000 Hz.
Bearings of 6205-2RS JEM SKF are applied in this
experiment, with the details of the geometry shown in
Table 2. With electro-discharge machining, single
point defects are imposed to the testing bearings.
The bearing with a fault occurring at different
Zhu et al. 13

Figure 14. Processing results of inner-race fault signal by utilizing different methods: (a) empirical parameter selection method; (b)
EMD-based envelope method; (c) EEMD-based envelope method; (d) DWT-based envelope method; (e) proposed adaptive VMD
method.

components possesses different characteristic frequen-  

nr f r D1
cies. Considering the shaft speed and bearing type, fBPFO ¼ 1 cos w ð12Þ
these fault characteristic frequencies can be calculated 2 D2
theoretically as follows

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14 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Figure 15. (a) Test platform of the experiment; (b) flaw of outer race; (c) flaw of inner race.

Figure 16. (a) The second original outer-race defective signal; (b) envelope spectrum.

Table 4. Specifications of the rolling bearing NJ208 (TMB).

Number of
Outside diameter Inside diameter Pitch diameter Ball diameter rolling elements Contact angle

80 mm 40 mm 60.5 mm 11 mm 14 0

  where nr is the number of rolling elements, fr is the

nr f r D1 rotating frequency of shaft, D1 and D2 are ball diam-
fBPFI ¼ 1þ cos w ð13Þ
2 D2 eter and the pitch diameter, respectively, w is the con-
tact angle, fBPFO and fBPFI are the fault characteristic

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Zhu et al.
Table 5. The fault-related information of the bearing.
Size of the fault
Fault location (DW) (mm)
Outer raceway 0.20.2
Inner raceway 0.20.2
Figure 17. (a) Iteration process of the AFSA; (b) time consuming for two-parameter search methods.
AFSA: artificial fish swarm algorithm.
frequencies for outer-race fault and inner-race fault,
separately. The fault associated parameters are dis-
played in Table 3.
The original outer-race defective signal and its cor-
responding envelope spectrum are shown in Figure 9.
In the time domain, the defect feature cannot be dis-
cerned because of the noise. It could be found that the
frequency at fBPFO in the envelope spectrum is still
overwhelmed by irrelevant frequency components.
After utilizing the proposed method, the iteration
process is gained in Figure 10(a). The optimal param-
eters are finally determined as K ¼ 8,  ¼ 1875. From
Figure 10(b), AFSA method has much faster conver-
gence speed than the conventional parameter search
method. An enhanced performance is acquired with
the proposed method as shown in Figure 11(e), the
characteristic frequency fBPFO is dominated in the
envelope spectrum, indicating the existence of bearing
fault in the outer raceway.
For the empirical parameter chosen method as
indicated in Figure 11(a), the fault characteristic fre-
quency fBPFO could be seen. However, the envelope
result is not very clear compared to the proposed
method. As displayed in Figure 11(b) and (c), the
EMD-based envelope method and EEMD-based
envelope method show a similar result to the empir-
ical method. As seen from Figure 11(d), wavelet spec-
trum method still fails to give fBPFO effectively since
there are other interference frequencies.
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15
Rotating Fault characteristic
speed (r/min) frequencies (Hz)
1496 142.8
1496 206.3
Therefore, the outer race experiment confirms that
the proposed adaptive VMD method is effective.
The processing procedures of inner-race fault
signal are quite the same as those of the
outer race. Figure 12 displays the original inner-race
defective signal and its corresponding envelope
spectrum. The useful information about the fault
is submerged by the noise. The envelope spectrum
could not give the characteristic frequency fBPFI
effectively.
The iteration process is given in Figure 13(a)
after carrying out the proposed method. The param-
eters K ¼ 10,  ¼ 350 are finally determined as the
optimal parameters. The time consuming in searching
optimal parameters is greatly reduced for AFSA
method as compared to the conventional method in
Figure 13(b). By the proposed adaptive VMD
method, we can see that the characteristic frequency
fBPFI in Figure 14(e) has been successfully enhanced to
be the most prominent component.
From the results of empirical parameter selection
method, EMD-based envelope method, EEMD-based
envelope method and DWT spectrum method as indi-
cated in Figure 14(a) to (d), respectively, all of
them show an improvement compared to the enve-
lope spectrum of the original vibration signal.
However, there are many interference frequencies exist-
ing so that the performance of these methods is not very
satisfactory.
16 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Figure 18. Processing results of outer-race fault signal by utilizing different methods: (a) empirical parameter selection method; (b)
EMD-based envelope method; (c) EEMD-based envelope method; (d) DWT-based envelope method; (e) proposed adaptive VMD
method.

Thus, the inner race experiment demonstrates that
the proposed method is suitable in detecting fault of
the rolling bearing.
Bearing data from self-made platform
Data collected from a cylindrical rolling bearing of type
NJ208 (TMB) are further processed to affirm the reli-
ability of the proposed method. The test platform of the
experiment is displayed in Figure 15(a), with the sam-
pling frequency 10,240 Hz. A radial load is applied to
the system by an adjustable spring. Artificial cracks had
been set by the wire-electrode cutting machine as dis-
played in Figure 15(b) and (c). Specifications of this type
of bearing are shown in Table 4. The fault associated
parameters are displayed in Table 5.
Figure 16 displays the raw outer-race defective sig-
nal and its corresponding envelope spectrum. We can
hardly get the defect information in the time domain.
We have trouble in identifying the fault characteristic
frequency fBPFO because it does not own the largest
value in the envelope spectrum.
We acquire the iteration process in Figure 17(a)
after applying the proposed method. The optimal

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Zhu et al. 17

Figure 19. (a) The second original inner-race defective signal; (b) envelope spectrum.

Figure 20. (a) Iteration process of the AFSA; (b) time consuming for two-parameter search methods.
AFSA: artificial fish swarm algorithm.

BLIMF is acquired as BLIMF2 with K ¼ 3,  ¼ 100.
From the result shown in Figure 17(b), AFSA method
has much faster convergence speed than the conven-
tional parameter search method.
From the result of the proposed method shown in
Figure 18(e), the characteristic frequency fBPFO
becomes dominate and its related harmonics exists.
The result of the proposed method shows superiority
to empirical parameter selection method, EMD-based
envelope spectrum, EEMD-based envelope spectrum
and wavelet spectrum method in Figure 18(a) to (d),
respectively.
The proposed adaptive VMD method is confirmed
to be effective and advantageous again.
Figure 19 displays the raw inner-race defective signal
and its corresponding envelope spectrum. Obviously,
the time domain signal is contaminated by the noise.
We have trouble in identifying the fault characteristic
frequency fBPFI because it does not possess the largest
value in the spectrum.
Applying the proposed method, the iteration pro-
cess is shown in Figure 20(a). We acquire the optimal
BLIMF as BLIMF3 with K ¼ 3,  ¼ 486. From the
result shown in Figure 20(b), AFSA method has much

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18 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Figure 21. Processing results of inner-race fault signal by utilizing different methods: (a) empirical parameter selection method; (b)
EMD-based envelope method; (c) EEMD-based envelope method; (d) DWT-based envelope method; (e) proposed adaptive VMD
method.

faster convergence speed than the conventional par-
ameter search method.
The final result is illustrated in Figure 21(e). From
the envelope spectrum, it is obvious that the fault char-
acteristic frequency fBPFI has the highest amplitude.
From the results of empirical parameter selection
method, EMD-based envelope method, the EEMD-
based envelope method and wavelet spectrum method
in Figure 21(a) to (d), fBPFI is even not the highest
value.
As a result, the inner race experiment demonstrates
that the proposed method is suitable in detecting fault
of the rolling bearing once again.
Conclusions
An adaptive VMD method based on AFSA for the
fault diagnosis of bearing is put forward in this paper.
Kurtosis index is employed as evaluation function to
select the parameters for VMD. With the parameters

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Zhu et al.
optimized by AFSA, the optimal BLIMF is acquired.
Then envelope analysis is applied to process the opti-
mal BLIMF, which consists of the most fault infor-
mation. Finally, the fault characteristic frequency is
successfully detected. The validity of the proposed
method has been proved by means of a simulation
signal and two sets of experimental signals.
Two significant advantages of this method are
apparent. One is that VMD is a novel signal processing
method which can decompose a signal into a certain
number of BLIMFs effectively. Certain BLIMF con-
tains the fault information since the fault characteristic
frequency is usually carried by the resonance frequency.
The other one is adaptive strategy for VMD based on
AFSA. This solves the problem of selecting the param-
eters involved in VMD empirically, which could pre-
vent the effectiveness of fault diagnosis.
For further research, we are trying to improve the
method to further reduce time consuming and com-
bine other fault diagnosis techniques to solve more
complicated issues.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Case Western Reserve
University for providing experimental bearing data.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
of this article: This work was sponsored by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China (51475441).
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