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Incipient fault detection of rolling bearing using maximum autocorrelation

impulse harmonic to noise deconvolution and parameter optimized fast
EEMD

Article in ISA Transactions · December 2018

DOI: 10.1016/j.isatra.2018.12.020

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Accepted Manuscript

Incipient fault detection of rolling bearing using maximum autocorrelation

impulse harmonic to noise deconvolution and parameter optimized fast
EEMD

Kai Zheng, Jiufei Luo, Yi Zhang, Tianliang Li, Jiafu Wen, Hong Xiao

PII: S0019-0578(18)30515-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2018.12.020
Reference: ISATRA 3017

To appear in: ISA Transactions

Received date : 11 August 2017

Revised date : 7 September 2018
Accepted date : 13 December 2018

Please cite this article as: K. Zheng, J. Luo, Y. Zhang et al. Incipient fault detection of rolling
bearing using maximum autocorrelation impulse harmonic to noise deconvolution and parameter
optimized fast EEMD. ISA Transactions (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2018.12.020

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*Title page showing Author Details

Incipient Fault Detection of Rolling Bearing Using Maximum

Autocorrelation Impulse Harmonic to Noise Deconvolution and
Parameter Optimized Fast EEMD

Kai Zheng a, *, Jiufei Luoa, Yi Zhanga , Tianliang Lib, Jiafu Wena, HongXiaoa

a
School of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and

Telecommunications, Chongqing China.

b
SMRT-NTU Smart Urban Rail Corporate Laboratory, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Corresponding author: Kai Zheng

E-mail: zhengkai2001@163.com

Tel: +008618875123687

School of Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Chongqing University of Posts and

Telecommunications, Chongqing China

*Highlights (for review)

•A new method for rolling bearing fault diagnosis is proposed based on parameters
optimized FEEMD-MAIHND method.
•A new indicator for identifying sensitive IMF of FEEMD algorithm is introduced.
•The MAIHND technique aims to maximize AINH index for input signal. Its
superiority over the MED and MCKD is proved by simulation and experiment.
• The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by simulation and
experiments.
*Blinded Manuscript - without Author Details
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Incipient Fault Detection of Rolling Bearing Using Maximum Autocorrelation

Impulse Harmonic to Noise Deconvolution and Parameter Optimized Fast
EEMD

Abstract: Incipient Fault Detection of Rolling Bearing with heavy background noise and interference

harmonics is a hot topic. In this paper, a new method based on parameter optimized Fast EEMD (FEEMD)

and Maximum Autocorrelation Impulse Harmonic to Noise Deconvolution (MAIHND) method is proposed

for detecting the incipient fault of rolling bearing. Firstly, the FEEMD method with parameters optimization

is used to reduce the noise and eliminate the interference harmonics of the fault signal. As a noise assistant

improved method, the FEEMD can reduce the mode mixing and enhance the calculation efficiency

significantly. Secondly, a new indicator is developed to select the sensitive IMF. Finally, a novel MAIHND

method is employed to extract impulse fault feature from the sensitive IMF. Simulation and experiments

results indicated that the proposed parameter optimized FEEMD-MAIHND method can effectively identify

the weak impulse fault feature of rolling bearing. Moreover, the excellent performance of the proposed

indicator for sensitive IMF component selection and MAIHND method is verified.

Keywords: Bearing fault diagnosis; Fast EEMD; IMF selection indicator; Maximum Autocorrelation

Impulse Harmonic to Noise Deconvolution (MAIHND).

1. Introduction
Rolling bearing has been widely used in wind turbines, high-speed railways and precision machine tools.

Its operation condition has significant influence on dynamic performance, reliability and service life of

mechanical systems [1-2]. When defect occurs on rolling bearing surfaces, the impulses are created in

vibration signal. And a desirable and successful diagnostic method should be able to detect the

corresponding repetition frequency of the impulses [2-3]. However, the rolling bearing often works in

complicated environment, and the vibration signals are easily contaminated by environmental noise and

other working parts [4-6]. Therefore, its early impulse fault is often featured with weak and low signal to

noise ratio.

To effective extract the impulses fault feature of the rolling bearing, it is very important to eliminate

noise and enhance the weak impulse fault features. Minimum Entropy Deconvolution (MED) aims to
improve kurtosis so as to enhance the pulse signals of bearing fault and reduce entropy [7-8]. It can recover

the output signal with the maximum value of kurtosis index by searching for an optimum set of filter

coefficients [9]. And a number of researches have been done to process the fault signals of bearings and

gears by employing MED methods and have achieved good effects. H.Endo et al. first used MED for fault

diagnosis of gears, and it is applied to enhance the impulse of autoregressive filter residual signal to detect

the fillet crack and spalls of the gear tooth [9]. Ruilong Jiang et al. detected the weak impulse features of

rolling element bearing using MED method with envelope spectrum analysis [10]. He, D et al proposed the

multiple faults diagnosis method in rotating machinery based on MED and spectral kurtosis [11]. Zhang, Z.

presented an enhanced fault diagnosis method of roller bearing elements using a combination of empirical

mode decomposition and MED [12]. For MED method, the kurtosis index is an indicator that reflects the

periodic impulse feature of the fault signal. However, when the periodic impulse is very weak, it will be

submerged by the background noises and interference harmonic in the collected vibration signal [13]. As a

result, the kurtosis value may not reveal the periodic impulse feature of the fault signal. Also, it is very

sensitive to large random impulses [14]. Moreover, the MED algorithm may be to deconvolve only a single

impulse or a selection of impulses, as opposed to the desired periodic impulses repeating at the period of the

fault [15]. Therefore, the Maximum correlated Kurtosis deconvolution (MCKD) method was proposed,

which aims to deconvolve periodic impulse faults from a machine vibration signal by taking the periodicity

of the fault into consideration [16]. The MCKD method was applied successfully in many scenarios for fault

diagnose of the bearing and gears. However, it rigorously requires the input parameters containing the fault

period, the length of filter, the maximum count of iteration and the order of shift. Only when the accuracy

and appropriate usage of these parameters are guaranteed, can the superiority of MCKD be highlighted [15].

With above shortcomings, a method for extraction of early feature of impulse fault of rolling bearing

was proposed based on Maximum Autocorrelation Impulse Harmonic to Noise Deconvolution (MAIHND)

in this research. Different from MED and MCKD, it aims to maximize the Autocorrelation Impulse

Harmonic to Noise (AIHN) index so as to enhance the period impulsive feature. And this method focuses on

the detection of periodic impulse feature and selects the best filtered signal by maximum AIHN values.

For the incipient bearing fault feature, it is contaminated by the heavy noises and interference harmonics.

Therefore, it is necessary to preprocess the fault signal when the MAINHD method is used . There are many
noise reducing methods. Among them, the Fast EEMD (FEEMD) can adaptively decompose the fault signal

into a serials of sub-frequency bands [17-18]. With the appropriate selection of the sub-band, the noise and

the irrelevant harmonic components can be reduced. Moreover, it eliminates the residual of added white

noise persisting in the IMFs and saves computational time [15-16]. Therefore, FEEMD method is used

firstly to preprocess the fault signal of rolling bearing in this research. However, the intensity of the added

white noise has a significant influence on FEEMD performance [18]. It is firstly suggested by Wu and

Huang [20] that in general the amplitude should be about 0.2 times the standard deviation of the input signal.

Also, several parameter selection guidelines have been proposed by many authors aiming to further

minimize the influence of human intervention on EEMD performance, which has produced several

parameters tuning algorithms [19,21-23]. And these methods have not yet so far emerged as dominant,

leaving the opportunity for potential further research. Also, the selection of the sensitive IMFs remains a

problem needing to be solved. The kurtosis is most widely used for choosing the relevant IMF components

[24]. And some scholars employed the Pearson's correlation coefficient (PCC) [25], instantaneous energy

and approximate entropy or fuse them to serve as an indicator for selection of IMF component [26].

However, most of these indicators were originally developed in the field of statistics or information theory,

but may ignore the specific characteristics of the vibration signals.

Motivated by above analysis, a method for extraction of early feature of impulse fault of rolling bearing

was proposed based on parameter optimized FEEMD-MAIHND. The originality of the proposed hybrid

methods is explained as follows: Parameters optimized FEEMD can overcome the mode mixing problem

and effectively denoise and eliminate the interference signals. Also, a new indicator is developed to select

the sensitive IMFs. Finally, a novel MAIHND method is employed to filter the selected sensitive IMFs. This

paper is organized as follows: Section II introduces the theoretical background, where the AIHN index, the

MAIHND algorithm, the parameter optimized FEEMD algorithm and the sensitive IMFs selection method

are introduced. Section III proposes a new method for fault diagnosis of rolling bearing based on parameter

optimized FEEMD-MAIHND. Section IV makes a simulated analysis for the performance of the proposed

method. In section V, the proposed method is verified by experiments. The method was applied for

processing engineer data in section VI. Section VII makes conclusions.

2. Theoretical background
2.1 Autocorrelation Impulse Harmonic to Noise Index

A new index called autocorrelation function periodic impulse harmonic to noise ration index (AIHN) is

proposed, which focuses on the detection of periodic impulse feature of the rolling bearing fault signal. The

calculation process is as follows:

Firstly, obtain the envelope signal with Hilbert transform of the original fault signal :

Secondly, calculate the absolute value of and remove the direct current component of ,

which is expressed as . Then compute the autocorrelation function of , as follows:

Finally, the AIHN index can be obtained, as shown in the follows:

In formula (3), the is amplitude value of autocorrelation function in th periodic

impulses, is the energy value in zero. It is recommended that the . More feature information

contained in the vibration signal with larger AIHN index.

And a group of simulation signal is designed to test the sensitivity to period impulse feature and

aperiod random impulse for kurtosis and AIHN index. The simulation signals are mixed by period impulse

sequences and noise, where the SNR of signal#1 is -5.5dB, the SNR of signal#2 is -6.9dB and the SNR of

signal#3 is -8.6 dB. The kurtosis and AINH index for the three signals are computed, as shown in

Fig.1(a)-(c). For signal#1, the values of two indexes are , for signal#2,

the and for signal#3, the . It is

clearly that kurtosis slightly decreases while AIHN decreases evidently with the gradually adding of noise.

Therefore, AIHN index is much more sensitive to period impulse feature than kurtosis. As large aperiod

random impulse from the interference harmonic may lead to false diagnosis, therefore, its influence of on the

kurtosis and AIHN index is analyzed. As shown in Fig.1(c)-(d), it can be found that by adding an aperiod
random impulse at for signal#2, the kurtosis and AIHN change to

. Apparently, the kurtosis increases significantly while AIHN index decrease slightly. As a result, the

AIHN index is robust to aperiod random impulse while kurtosis is very sensitive to it.

In conclusion, the AIHN index has better performance for detection of period impulse feature than

kurtosis and it is less likely influenced by the aperiod random impulse in the signal.

Fig.1 The kurtosis and AIHN value with the fault simulation signal with the different SNR (a) SNR=-5.5dB (b) SNR=-8.6dB
(c) SNR=-6.9dB without aperiod random impulse (d) SNR=-6.9dB with aperiod random impulse.

2.2 Maximum Autocorrelation Impulse Harmonic to Noise Deconvolution

Minimum entropy deconvolution (MED) was first put forward by Wiggins [9-11]. The basic

principle of MED is to solve deconvolution results to highlight the large sharp pulses, which uses the

maximum kurtosis as a stopping criterion for iteration. According to the principle of kurtosis

maximization, larger kurtosis indicates that there are more impulses in the signal. When early fault of a

rolling bearing appears, its signal can be expressed as:

Where is fault impulse sequence, is the transfer function, is noise, and is

the fault signal of rolling bearing. The purpose of solving deconvolution is to obtain an inverse

filter . Therefore, if the entropy is minimized, the property of the original signal can be restored to

some extent. As the periodic impulse represents the fault features of rolling bearing, the kurtosis of

signals should be maximized. The inverse filtering convolution can be calculated as follows:
 Where l is the length of inverse filter . Therefore, the property of can be restored by

solving the inverse filter. Calculation of the minimum entropy with MED is as follows [15-16]:

Finally, the maximum kurtosis of can be obtained according to for which the derivative:

For MED method, it aims to improve kurtosis so as to enhance the pulse signals. However, when the

periodic impulse is very weak, it will be submerged by the background noises and rotating frequency-related

interference harmonic components in the collected vibration signal. On the other hand, kurtosis is very

sensitive to large random impulses. The AIHN index is much more sensitive to period impulse feature and

robust to random impulses than the kurtosis. Therefore, we proposed a novel maximum autocorrelation

impulse harmonic to noise deconvolution (MAIHND) method. The MAIHND technique aims to maximize

AINH index for input signal. The process of the algorithm can be illustrated in Fig.2.

Fig.2. The Framework of the MAIHND algorithm

The MAIHND method can be started from the maximization problem as equation (8), and the definition

of each variant can be found in the above section

To solve the filter coefficients corresponding to the maximum, we solve the equation (9)
 As it is hard to obtain the accurate model of the filter of MAIHND method, we proposed an approximate

model of it. Based on the filter model of MED and MCKD method, the filter model of the MAIHND method

can be assumed as follows:

Where the can be calculated as:

Moreover, the is the Toeplitz autocorrelation matrix of the original signal x and the inverse

is assumed to exist. And the coefficient and are assumed to be computed as follows:

Although it is an approximate filter model for MAIHND method, it is clear that it has better performance

in extracting weak features from noisy signals compared with MED method. These superiorities mainly

benefit from the excellent performance of AIHN index which can evaluate the impulsiveness and periodicity

of the fault signal simultaneously and less likely be influenced by the large random impulse.

2.3 The parameter optimized method of the Fast EEMD

The time complexity of EEMD algorithm can be expressed as , and is

proportion to the total average number (M) and . When is a constant, the time complexity of

EEMD algorithm can be expressed as [20]. With the

purpose of processing signals in real-time, Fast EEMD was investigated by Wang in 2014 and numerical

examples were presented in [20] to verify that Fast EEMD was a computationally efficient method. Wang

modified the number of screening of IMF in EEMD algorithm as a constant, and he conducted a numerical

experiment for analysis. The experimental result shows that EEMD method with fixed number of screening
can substantially shorten the calculation time and can be used for processing signals in real-time. Therefore,

EEMD method with fixed number of screening is defined as Fast EEMD algorithm.

The discrete degree of distribution of the extreme points has a great influence on the decomposing

results of FEEMD. To make a quantitative evaluation on the distribution of extreme points of the vibration

signals with white noise added, a coefficient was proposed. Firstly, the standard deviations of

amplitude of the vibration signals is obtained, which can be calculated as follows:

Where is the value of the extreme points of the signal . is the difference value of the

adjacent extreme points. N is the length of the signal . Then the root means square of

will be taken as the coefficient for evaluating the distribution of extreme points, which can be calculated as:

The larger of evaluation coefficient, the larger the discrete degree of distribution of the extreme points

of the fault signal with white noise added will be. And the mode mixing phenomenon of the FEEMD method

can be effectively suppressed with the largest coefficient . Therefore, a parameter optimized algorithm for

the FEEMD is proposed. The main steps are as follows:

Firstly, repeatedly added white noises gradually enlarged the intensity in vibration signal. The white

noise intensity factor is , which was set in the range of . Secondly, the best noise intensity was

obtained by the maximum value of evaluation coefficient . Finally, automatically obtain the total

decomposition number according to the statistical rule . Thus, the two important parameters

of FEEMD algorithm can be adaptively determined.

A simple simulation process was employed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed parameter

optimization algorithm. In this test, a simulation signal mixed by three signals is employed

for FEEMD decomposition, where is the Gaussian pulse signal, ,

 . Based on the proposed parameters optimization algorithm, the relationship between the noise

level and the coefficient is obtained for the signal . It can be found that when , the

coefficient reaches to the largest, as shown in Fig.3.

Fig.3. The relationship between the intensity of white noises added and the evaluation coefficient .

Therefore, the optimized parameters were . The decomposed IMF components

were obtained by FEEMD algorithm based on the optimized parameters, as shown in Fig.4(a). To verify the

effectiveness of the parameter optimization algorithm, the parameters are utilized for

FEEMD decomposition. And the decomposition result is shown in Fig.4 (b). By comparing Fig. 4(a) and

Fig.4 (b), it is clear that the mode mixing phenomena is significantly reduced using optimized parameters.

Fig.4. The FEEMD decomposition results of the simulation signal. (a) The parameter was set as
(b) The parameter was set as .

2.4 Sensitive IMFs selection for the FEEMD method

For the fault signal, a series of IMFs are obtained by FEEMD method. Many irrelevant IMFs should be

excluded as only few IMFs are expected to contain the fault information of the rolling bearings. Therefore,

an indicator for selecting sensitive IMFs is proposed in this section.

 The kurtosis as an indicator of impulse shows extreme high values in the case of a strong and

non-Gaussian noise. However, it is easily influenced by background noise and larger aperiodic impulses

[13-14, 28]. For the AINH index, it can indicate the ratio of period impulse harmonic and noise components

in vibration signals but may suffer from the interference harmonics. And the Pearson Correlation Coefficient

(PCC) can divide the IMFs into clusters of sensitive and not so sensitive IMFs [25]. Inspired by above

analysis, a new indicator for IMF selection absorbs the advantages and avoids the disadvantages of the

above index was proposed, which is calculated as follows:

Firstly, the kurtosis and AIHN value can be gained of each IMF components. Also, calculate the PCC

value between the IMF components and the original fault signal.

Secondly, as the amplitude ranges of these three indicators are different, they were normalized in the

same scale [25]. And the Min-Max Normalization technique is employed, where the [min, max] limits are

set to [0,1]. Hence the index with maximum correlation value will be normalized to a value of 1 and the

index with the least correlation is normalized to a value of 0. And the Min-Max Normalization formula is as

follow:

Thirdly, by multiplying the AIHN index, kurtosis and PCC, the proposed indicator of each IMF

component can be calculated, as follows:

Also, the indicator is normalized in the scale of [0, 1]. According to the new indicator, the IMF

component can be selected with the largest indicator value.

3. The proposed method

Given above analysis, the FEEMD method with parameters optimized can effectively suppress the

noise and eliminate the interference signals. MAIHND method can eliminate the effect of transfer path and
extract periodic impulse fault feature. Therefore, a combined method was proposed based on parameters

optimized FEEMD-MAIHND for fault diagnosis. The steps are as follows, as shown in Fig.5:

(1) Firstly, decompose the vibration signals with parameters optimized FEEMD method to obtain a

series of IMF components. Then compute the indicator values of each IMF components. The IMF

component with the largest indicator value is selected.

(2) Secondly, employ the MAIHND method to eliminate the effect of transfer path and extract the

impulse fault feature for the sensitive IMF component. Obtain the fault information according to the

envelope spectrum of the processed signal.

Fig.5. Framework of the proposed method.

4. The simulation analysis

4.1 The simulation signal of the fault bearing

To verify the validity of the proposed method, a typical simulated fault signal of rolling bearing was

employed for analysis. It can be calculated via formulas (18) (19) (20). Where is the interference

signal, the periodic impulses fault sequence and the noise component.
 The period impulse fault signal can be modeled as

Where is the amplitude of the impulse sequence, the amplitude of the interference

harmonics, the frequency of the interference harmonic, the damping coefficient, the resonance

frequency, the cyclic period and the whole number of the impulses. To verify the effectiveness of the

proposed method, the fault signal with heavy background noise and interference harmonics was created. The

signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and signal-to-interference harmonics ratio (SIR) of the fault signal can be

calculated according to ref [29].

4.2 The performance analysis of the proposed method

To investigate the effectiveness of the parameter optimized FEEMD-MAIHND method, the simulation

signal is analyzed, where SIR=-9dB, SNR=-14.5dB. The simulation fault signal of rolling bearings is

shown in Fig.6. The fault frequency is set to 60Hz and the resonant frequency is 2,000Hz. The sampling

points of each simulated signal are set to 12,000 and the sampling frequency is set to 12kHz. The

interference signal and the period impulse sequences are shown in Fig.6(a) and Fig.6(b). The mixed

simulated signal and its envelope spectrum are shown in Fig.6(c) and Fig.6(d), respectively. From Fig.6(d),

it can be seen that the impulse fault features were totally submerged by the noise and interference

components , which indicated that the envelope spectrum of the original signal cannot reveal information

about the impulse fault feature. Therefore, the proposed method is performed on the simulated signal.
 Fig.6. The simulation of the fault signal (a) The simulation of the periodic impulse signal (b) The simulation of the
interference signal (c) The mixed fault signal (d) The envelope spectrum of the mixed signal

Firstly, based on the framework of the proposed method, the parameter optimized FEEMD was used to

decompose the stimulated fault signal. The relationship between the intensity of white noises added and the

evaluation coefficient were obtained as shown in Fig.7. It can be found that when noise level k

it is basically proportional to the evaluation coefficient . As a result, it can be seen that the evaluation

coefficient reached the largest when k .

Fig.7. The relationship between the intensity of white noises added and the evaluation coefficient .

Therefore, we can obtain the optimized parameters . And six decomposed IMF

components can be obtained by FEEMD algorithm of the stimulated signal. The frequency spectrum

analysis of each IMF components was carried out, as shown in Fig.8.

 Fig.8. The envelope spectrum of IMFs decomposed by parameters optimized FEEMD of the simulation signal. (a)-(f) are
the frequency spectrum of IMFs from IMF1-IMF6.

From Fig.8 (a), it can be found that the IMF#1 contains the periodic impulse feature. However, it is

contaminated by the heavy noise, making the periodic impulse feature hardly to be identified. Comparatively,

the impulse feature in the IMF #2 is located in the resonant frequency band, and it can be clearly observed,

as shown in Fig.8 (b). Similar to IMF#1, the periodic impulses component in IMF#3 are totally submerged

by the noises, as shown in Fig.8(c). Obviously, IMF #4 and IMF#5 did not contain any periodic impulse

feature, as shown in Fig.8(d) and Fig.8(e). The IMFs #6 only convey the information of the interference

harmonic components, as shown in Fig.8 (f). From above analysis, it can be found that IMF#2 is the

sensitive component which should be selected for further analysis, while other IMFs are considered to be

pseudo components.

Correspondingly, the value of the PCC, the kurtosis, the AIHN index and the proposed indicator for each

IMF components were computed, which are presented in Fig.9, respectively. In Fig.9 (a), it is clear that the

IMF#1 is the sensitive sub-bands based on the PCC selection criterion, which contradicts the above analysis.

Although the IMF#2 can be selected using the kurtosis and the AIHN index, however, it is much easier to be

distinguish from the proposed indicator, as shown in Fig.9(b), Fig.9 (c) and Fig.9(d). Therefore, we can

conclude that the proposed indicator outperforms the PCC, the kurtosis and the AIHN index. And a further
detailed validation for the effectiveness of the proposed indicator is presented in the next section.

Fig.9. The indexes value of each IMFs (sub-bands) (a) The values of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (b) The values of
kurtosis (c)The values of AIHN index (d) The values of the proposed indicator.

Fig.10(a) presents the envelope spectrum of the sensitive IMF obtained by parameter optimized FEEMD.

For comparison purpose, the commonly used parameter is set for FEEMD to verity the

effectiveness of the parameter optimization algorithm. The envelope spectrum of the sensitive IMFs

obtained by FEEMD is shown in Fig.10(b). In Fig.5(a), it is clear that the fault frequencies of , ,

and can be clearly detected. Compared with the envelope spectrum of Fig.10(b), it shows much better

clarity on impulse fault feature. Also, we calculated the kurtosis and ACFHNR value of the sensitive IMF

obtained by the two method with different levels of noise, as shown in Fig.11. It can be found that the

sensitive IMF gained by parameter optimized FEEMD contained more fault feature information. Therefore,

the proposed parameter optimization algorithm is effective.

Fig. 10. The envelope spectrum of sensitive IMF obtained by (a) parameter optimized FEEMD and (b) FEEMD method.
 Fig. 11. The (a) ACFHNR and (b) kurtosis value of sensitive IMF obtained by parameter optimized FEEMD and FEEMD with
different level of noise.

Although the envelope spectrum can provide some fault information to indicate the existence of the fault

characteristic frequency, it is not clear enough in time and frequency domain. Therefore, the sensitive IMF is

processed by MAIHND method, as shown in Fig.12(a), where the length of the filter is set to 300. We can

see that the impulse features obtained by MAIHND method are manifested in both time and frequency

domain. For the sake of comparison, the sensitive IMF is also processed by MED and MCKD method. To

make a fair comparison, the length of filters is set to 300 for both MED and MCKD methods, and the

processed results are plotted in Fig.12 (b)-(c). As shown in Fig.12 (b)-(c), the period impulse feature gained

by the two methods is hard to identify. The locations of the bearing fault signature, i.e. theoretical fault

frequency and its harmonics, are marked with dotted red lines in Fig.12. From above analysis, it can be seen

that MAIHND method is more excellent than MED and MCKD method. A further detailed validation for the

excellent performance of the MAIHND is presented in experiments and engineering application section.

Fig.12.The time waveform signal and its envelop spectrum of sensitive IMF component processed by (a) MAIHND (b) MED
and (c) MCKD method.
 We further compare the denoising performance of the proposed MAIHND method with MED and

MCKD method. The approximate entropy (AE), SNR of output signals were employed to evaluate the

denoising performance of these methods. Approximate entropy is a nonnegative number used for indicating

predictability of the signal, so as to describe the repeatability of time sequence. Time series with large

approximate entropy must have substantial fluctuation of irregularity [30]. The SNR of output signals

emphasizes the distinction between the target frequency and the principal interfering frequencies. The larger

of SNR output value, the more target frequency components in the signals are obtained [31].

The simulation signals are only mixed by the period impulses and the noise signal, where the impulse

sequence can be obtained via formulas (23). The parameters of the simulation signals are the same as in

section 4.2. To make a fair comparison, all the lengths of filter of the three methods are set to L=300. Figs.

13(a) and (b) present the output SNR and AE for the three methods, respectively. It is clear that MAIHND

outperforms MED, MCKD methods and envelope analysis (EA) for this simulation case as the MAIHND

obtains the largest output SNR and smallest AE value with input SNRs changes from about -5 dB to – 13dB.

Fig. 13. (a)Output SNR (dB) and (b) approximate entropy of the four methods for the simulation signals with different noises.

Finally, the consumption costs of the MAIHND and MED, MCKD are also provided in Fig.14. The

SNR of the simulation signal is set to -9.6dB and the length for filter of three methods are set to L=300. It

can be observed from Fig.14 (a), (b) and (c) that it only took the MAIHND method to reach the maximum

index value by 5 iteration times, while the MED and MCKD by 16 and 17 iteration times, respectively.

Repeating the computing process 10 times, the computing time for MAIHND method is about 2.56 seconds

while MED and MCKD are about 4 seconds (The computation environment: i5 7200 processor, 8G RAM,
MATLAB 2012(b)), as shown in Fig.14(d). The time cost comparison indicates that MAIHND method

spends less time in obtaining good performance for fault feature extraction.

Fig.14. The comparison of the computation efficiency for MAIHND, MED and MCKD method. (a) The iteration process of
MAIHND (b) The iteration process of MED (c) The iteration process of MCKD (d) The computing time of the three methods.

To guarantee that the filter can accurately cover the whole fault frequency band using MAIHND method,

the influence of filter length for the MAIHND method is analyzed. The per-unit sample length is

=200 points. Where is the sample frequency, the fault frequency. In the test, the filter length

increased from 100 to 550, and the equidistance interval was set to 50. Six groups of simulation signals were

tested, where the SNR of the signals were set to -7.2dB, -8.6 dB, -9.7dB, -10.6 dB, -11.3dB, -12dB,

respectively. The output SNR values are gained, as shown in Fig.15. It can be found that the output SNR

value is larger when , which suggested that the length of filter should be satisfied when .

On the other hand, the computation time increases significantly when the filter length is too long. Therefore,

the filter length is recommended in the range of for MAIHND method.

Fig. 15. Output SNR of MAIHND method on the simulation signals with different filter size.
5. Experiment verification

The fault signal coming from the bearing data center Laboratory of Case Western Reserve University

were analyzed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The bearing fault test bed consists of a 2

HP motor, a torque transducer/encoder, and a dynamometer, as shown in Fig.16. The test bearings

(SKF6205), including drive end and fan end bearings, support the motor rotor shaft. Three types of single

point faults (outer race fault, inner race fault and ball fault) were introduced to the test bearings [32-33]. In

the experiment, the vibration signals of rolling bearing were collected by 3 accelerometers, which were

mounted to the housing with magnetic bases at 3, 6 and 12 o’clock positions.

The benefits of a new method are demonstrated by successfully diagnosing the data sets which are

categorized as not diagnosable or partially diagnosable. Therefore, record 186DE and record 264DE are

chosen to assess the effectiveness of the proposed method [32-33]. The fault frequency of BSF (ball spin

frequency) of 186 DE is about = 137 Hz and the BPFO (ball pass frequency, outer race) of 264DE is

about = 105 Hz.

Fig.16. The test bed of bearing fault of Case Western Reserve University

5.1 The ball fault detection of rolling bearing

To start with, we analyzed the vibration signal of 186 DE using the parameter optimized

FEEMD-MAIHND method. The sampling rate was 12 kHz, and the 12000 points were collected for analysis.

From the waveform and its envelope spectrum presented in Fig.17(a) and Fig.17(b), it is very hard to find

the fault features. It is difficult to detect the fault frequency and its harmonics through directly
envelope analysis.

Fig.17. The waveform of data 186DE and its envelope spectrum (a) The original signal (b) The envelope spectrum

With the proposed method, the original signal was decomposed with parameter optimized FEEMD.

Where . The AIHN index, kurtosis, PCC and the proposed indicators value of each IMF

components were obtained, as shown in Fig.18(a)-(d), respectively. From Fig.18(d), it is clear that the

IMF#1 are the sensitive sub-bands based on the proposed indicator selection criterion, however, the IMF#6

should be selected according to kurtosis selection criterion, as shown in Fig.18(b).

Fig.18. The indexes value of each IMFs (sub-bands) (a) The values of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (b) The values of
kurtosis (c)The values of AIHN index (d) The values of the proposed indicator.

For comparison purpose, we analyzed the envelope spectrum of the IMF #1 and IMF#6, and the results

are shown in Fig.19(a)-(b). From Fig.19(a), it can be found that the fault frequency can be detected in

IMF #1, which indicated that the IMF #1 is the sensitive sub-band. However, although the kurtosis value of

IMF#6 is extremely large, there was no fault frequency information in Fig.19 (b). We can obverse that there

was a large random noise in the time domain of IMF#6, contributing to the large kurtosis value. These

comparison results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed indicator for sensitive IMFs selection.
 Fig.19. (a)The waveform of IMF#1 selected by the indicator and its envelope spectrum. (b)The waveform
of IMF#6 selected by kurtosis and its envelope spectrum

The fault information provided by parameter optimized FEEMD is still hard to identify. Therefore, the

sensitive IMF#1 is processed by the proposed MAIHND method. The length of the filter is set to 200. We

can see that the fault frequency , , and of the fault signal are clearly extracted by the

MAIHND method, as shown in Fig.20(a). For the sake of comparison, the sensitive sub-band is processed

by MED and MCKD method. The length of filters is also set to 200 for both MED and MCKD methods, and

the processed results are plotted in Fig.20 (b)-(c), respectively. As shown in Fig.20(b), only fault frequency

and its secondly harmonic can be gained by MED methods. For MCKD method, only fault

frequency can be identified, as shown in Fig.20(c). From above analysis, we can see that MAIHND

method provide more fault related information compared with MED and MCKD method. The locations of

the bearing fault signature, i.e. theoretical BSP and its harmonics, are marked with dotted red lines in Fig.20.

Fig.20. The time waveform signal and its envelop spectrum of sensitive IMF component processed by (a) MAIHND (b)
MED and (c) MCKD method.
5.2 The outer race fault detection of rolling bearing

The signal of outer race fault (264DE) is also processed using the parameter optimized

FEEMD-MAIHND method. The sampling rate was 48 kHz. 48000 points were collected for analysis. For

dataset 264DE, the vibration signal shows periodic impact features in time domain, however, the fault

frequency is not manifested in the envelope spectrum, as shown in Fig.21(a) and Fig.21(b).

Fig.21. The waveform of data 186DE and its envelope spectrum (a) The original signal (b) The envelope spectrum

Firstly, the signal was decomposed with parameter optimized FEEMD. Where .

The AIHN index, kurtosis, PCC and the proposed indicators value of each IMF components were obtained,

as shown in Fig.22(a)-(d), respectively. In Fig.22 (a), it is clear that the IMF#2 is the sensitive IMF using

PCC selection criterion, while the IMF#1 should be selected according to kurtosis selection criterion, as

shown in Fig.22(b) and Fig.22(d) presents that the IMF#5 is sensitive IMF according to the proposed

indicator.

Fig.22. The index value of each IMFs (sub-bands) (a) The values of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (b) The values of kurtosis
(c)The values of AIHN index (d) The values of the proposed indicator.

To prove the effectiveness of the indicator, we analyzed the envelope spectrum of the IMF #1, IMF#2
and IMF# 5, and the results are shown in Fig.23(a)-(c). Fig.23 (a) illustrates that the fault frequency

is totally submerged by noise in IMF#1, which indicated that IMF #1 is not the sensitive sub-band, although

its kurtosis value is the largest. The fault frequency can be detected in IMF#2, however, it is not

clearly enough, as shown in Fig.23(b). For IMF#5, the fault frequency can be clearly identified, as

shown in Fig.23(c). These comparison results indicate the effectiveness of the indicator once again.

Fig.23. (a)The waveform of IMF#1 selected by kurtosis and its envelope spectrum. (b)The waveform of IMF#2 selected by Pcc
and its envelope spectrum. (c) The waveform of IMF#5 selected by the indicator and its envelope spectrum

Secondly, the sensitive IMF is further processed by MAIHND method, as shown in Fig. 24(a). We can

see that the fault frequency and are clearly extracted with MAIHND method, which

indicated that MAIHND method can significant enhance the fault feature. For comparison purpose, the

sensitive IMF is processed by the MED and MCKD method. The processed results of MED are plotted in

Fig.24(b)-(c). From Fig.24(b), we can find that two fault harmonics can be detected. For MCKD method,

only the first fault harmonic can be identified, as shown in Fig.20(c). Although the fault frequency and its

secondly harmonic can be detected using the MED and MCKD method. However, they are not clearly

enough. This comparison demonstrates the effectiveness of parameter optimized FEEMD-MAIHND method.

Also, the excellent performance of the indicator for selecting the sensitive IMF and the superiority of

MAIHND method compared with MED and MCKD method are also demonstrated. The locations of the

bearing fault signature, i.e. theoretical BPFO and its harmonics, are marked with dotted red lines in Fig.24.
 Fig.24. The time waveform signal and its envelop spectrum of sensitive IMF processed by (a) MAIHND (b) MED and (c)
MCKD method.

6. Engineering application

The effectiveness of the proposed method is investigated by the data of the spindle bearings of 2MW

wind turbines. The vibration signals of rolling bearing were collected by one accelerometer. The inner race

fault of rolling bearings experienced the process from early failure to serious failure [34]. In the experiments,

50 groups of data were collected. And the sampling frequency is set to 97656 Hz. The fault frequency of

inner fault can be computed, which is about = 284.1 Hz. The early fault signal of group #9 is

analyzed. From the waveform and its envelope spectrum of group #9 presented in Fig.25(a)-(b), it is clear

that the impulse fault feature is submerged by heavy background noise.

Fig.25. The waveform of the wind bearing fault signal its envelope spectrum (a) The original signal (b) The envelope spectrum

Therefore, the vibration signal of group #9 is analyzed using the parameter optimized

FEEMD-MAIHND method. Firstly, the original signal was decomposed with FEEMD. The optimized

parameters were . The AIHN, kurtosis, PCC and the indicators value of each IMF

components were obtained, as shown in Fig.26 (a)-(d), respectively. In Fig.26(a)(c), it is clearly that IMF#2
and IMF#6 are the sensitive sub-bands using PCC selection criterion, while the IMF#1 should be selected

according to the indicator, as shown in Fig.26(d).

Fig.26. The indexes value of each IMFs (sub-bands) (a) The values of Pearson’s correlation coefficient (b) The values of
kurtosis (c)The values of AIHN index (d) The values of the proposed indicator.

We analyzed the spectrum of IMF #1, IMF#2 and IMF#6, and the results are shown in Fig.27(a)-(c).

Fig.27(b)-(c) illustrates that the fault frequency is totally submerged by irrelevant components and

noise of IMF#2 and IMF# 6, which indicated that IMF #2 and IMF# 6 are not the sensitive sub-bands. For

IMF#1, the fault frequency and its second harmonics can be clearly identified, as shown in Fig.27(a).

Therefore, IMF#1 is considered as the sensitive sub-band. These comparison results indicate the

effectiveness of the proposed indicator.

Fig.27. (a)The waveform of IMF#1 selected by the indicator and its envelope spectrum. (b)The waveform of IMF#2
selected by Pcc and its envelope spectrum. (c) The waveform of IMF#6 selected by AIHN and its envelope spectrum

Afterwards, IMF#1 is processed by MAIHND method, as shown in Fig 28(a). Also, it is processed by
MED and MCKD method and the results are plotted in Fig.28(b)-(c). The MAIHND method can distinguish

three harmonics of the fault frequencies , , and the side frequencies such as

while the MCKD method can only identify fault frequencies of .

The fault frequency and can be detected using MED method, however, they are not clear

enough compared with the MAIHND method. This comparison further demonstrates the effectiveness of

parameter optimized FEEMD-MAIHND method. The locations of the bearing fault signature, i.e. theoretical

BPFI and its harmonics, are marked with dotted red lines in Fig.28.

Fig.28. The time waveform signal and its envelop spectrum of sensitive IMF component processed by (a) MAIHND (b)
MED and (c) MCKD method.

7. Conclusion

In early fault stage of rolling bearing, periodic impulses are often overwhelmed by heavy noise and

harmonic interferences. We present a new method based on parameter optimized FEEMD-MAIHND method

for incipient fault diagnosis of rolling bearing. Firstly, parameter optimized FEEMD is used to reduce noise

and to eliminate harmonic interference, and an indicator is developed for discriminating sensitive IMF;

Secondly, a novel MAIHND algorithm is designed for extracting periodic impulses feature of sensitive IMF.

The most obvious findings of this study are reflected by two aspects: (a) A new indicator for sensitive

IMF selection absorbing the advantages and avoiding the disadvantages of the AIHN, the kurtosis and PCC
was proposed. Simulations and experimental study confirm that the proposed indicator is robust and

consistent in identifying fault-generated transient impulses related IMF component. (b) The sensitive IMF

component is filtered by MAIHND method, which aims to maximize the AIHN index for deconvolution,

showing better performance for extracting weak feature compared with MED and MCKD method. It is

proved by both simulation and experiment results.

The excellent performances of the proposed method are demonstrated by the simulation analysis,

experimental testing and engineering application, showing that the parameter optimized FEEMD-MAIHND

method can effectively extract weak impulse fault feature both in time and frequency domain. Therefore, it

can serve as a new tool for fault diagnosis of rolling bearings.

Acknowledgement

The authors wound like to thank the Case Western University Bearing Data Center and

data-acoustics.com Database for providing the experimental data. This research is supported by Chongqing

Research Program of Basic Research and Frontier Technology (No. cstc2017jcyjAX0151, cstc

2015jcyjBX0066) and in part supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.

51705059, 51605064).

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