FAULT DIAGNOSIS OF A BALL BEARING USING VIBRATION ANALYSIS
Date
2023-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
IOE Pulchowk Campus
Abstract
Failure of ball bearings is a major cause of rotatory machine failure resulting in large
economic losses and possible injury to human lives. Correct diagnosis helps to
identify bearing faults and use the bearings effectively, preventing catastrophic
failures of rotating machines. Detecting potential problems early, and condition
monitoring allows for proactive maintenance and reduces the downtime of machines.
Improved equipment reliability and efficiency lead to lower maintenance costs and
increased productivity. The study aimed to classify three types of bearing faults: Inner
Raceway, Outer Raceway and Ball fault. Inner Raceway and Outer Raceway faults
were introduced in the 608-deep groove ball bearing via an electric grinder making
1.5mm line cuts through the axis of the bearing. For ball fault, one ball was removed
out of the 7 present. An accelerometer with sampling frequency of 1000Hz was fixed
on the drive end of the AC induction motor to acquire the vibration signals. Models
for Support Vector Machine (SVM), Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) (both 1D
CNN and 2D CNN) and Long Short Term Memory Network (LSTM) were
developed. Raw bearing fault data from an open-source database, CWRU was fed into
the models to check their accuracy. A minimum accuracy of 92.47% was acquired
from the raw CWRU data, thus validating the models. The acquired fault data from
the accelerometer was processed through a (20Hz, 500Hz) band pass filter before
feeding into the machine learning and deep learning models. 70% of the vibration data
was used for training the models while the remaining 30% was used for testing. Out
of the 4 models compared, 1D CNN gave a maximum test accuracy of 98.35%.
Description
Bearings are among the most crucial components of almost every rotating machine.
Failure of bearings can lead to large downtime, and equipment failures and can cause
injuries to human lives. Lack of lubrication, contamination, fatigue, and misalignment
are some of the most common causes of bearing failure. Failure of bearing is the
result of a failure of a specific component or components.
Keywords
Fault Diagnosis, Ball Bearing