Inaccessible rolling bearing diagnosis using a novel criterion for Morlet wavelet optimization

The objective of this research is to diagnose an inaccessible rolling bearing by indirect vibration measurement. In this study, a shaft supported with several bearings is considered. It is assumed that the vibration for at least one bearing is not recordable. The purpose is to diagnose inaccessible bearing by the recorded data from the sensors located on the other bearings. To achieve this goal, the continuous wavelet transform is used to detect weak signatures in the available vibration signals. A new criterion for adjusting the scale parameter of continuous wavelet transform is proposed based on the amplitude of the bearing characteristic frequencies. In this criterion, the optimal scale is selected to maximize the amplitude of bearing characteristic frequencies in comparison with the amplitude of the other frequencies. The results of the proposed method are compared with a popular method, energy-to-entropy ratio criterion, using two different sets of run-to-failure experimental data. Results indicate that the proposed method in this article is more effective and efficient for extracting the weak signatures and diagnosing inaccessible bearings from the recorded vibration signals.