Research of Two Different Impulsive Faults of Rolling Element Bearing

Fans and pumps are key machines in process industries such as petrochemical and petroleum industries. Their faults can be catastrophic and result in costly downtime. Bearing fault is almost the most common fault of fans and pumps as rolling element bearings are widely used in these machines. Hence, condition monitoring and diagnosis of bearings are important. Two different impulsive faults of bearings have been observed and studied in previous research. The first fault presents very clear impulsive symptom in envelope spectrum, but the bearing can work for a long time. The other fault shows relatively indistinct symptom, but the bearing will break down in a short time. To overcome the problems of inaccurate diagnosis, a combinational approach based on an impulsive energy indicator and traditional enveloping analysis is proposed in this paper. This approach discriminate these two faults well and can support the maintenance decision for the machines with rolling element bearings.