Detection of Generalized Roughness Bearing Fault by Spectral Kurtosis Energy by Vibration or Current Signals

Generalized roughness is the most common damage occurring to rolling bearing. It produces a frequency spreading of the characteristics fault frequencies, thus being difficult to detect with spectral or envelope analysis. A statistical analysis of typical bearing faults is here proposed in order to identify the spreading bandwidth related to specific conditions, relying on current or vibration measurements only. Then a diagnostic index based on the computation of the energy in the above defined bandwidth is used to diagnose bearing faults. The proposed method was validated experimentally with vibration signals, with robust and reliable results. The same procedure can be extended to current signals.