Vibration model of rolling element bearings in a rotor-bearing system for fault diagnosis

Rolling element bearing faults are among the main causes of breakdown in rotating machines. In this paper, a rolling bearing fault model is proposed based on the dynamic load analysis of a rotor-bearing system. The rotor impact factor is taken into consideration in the rolling bearing fault signal model. The defect load on the surface of the bearing is divided into two parts, the alternate load and the determinate load. The vibration response of the proposed fault signal model is investigated and the fault signal calculating equation is derived through dynamic and kinematic analysis. Outer race and inner race fault simulations are realized in the paper. The simulation process includes consideration of several parameters, such as the gravity of the rotor-bearing system, the imbalance of the rotor, and the location of the defect on the surface. The simulation results show that different amplitude contributions of the alternate load and determinate load will cause different envelope spectrum expressions. The rotating frequency sidebands will occur in the envelope spectrum in addition to the fault characteristic frequency. This appearance of sidebands will increase the difficulty of fault recognition in intelligent fault diagnosis. The experiments given in the paper have successfully verified the proposed signal model simulation results. The test rig design of the rotor bearing system simulated several operating conditions: (1) rotor bearing only; (2) rotor bearing with loader added; (3) rotor bearing with loader and rotor disk; and (4) bearing fault simulation without rotor influence. The results of the experiments have verified that the proposed rolling bearing signal model is important to the rolling bearing fault diagnosis of rotor-bearing systems. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.