JOURNAL OF VIBROENGINEERING 1
Fault diagnosis and health management of bearings in
rotating equipment based on vibration analysis – a
review
Adnan Althubaiti
1
, Faris Elasha
2
, Joao Amaral Teixeira
3
1, 2, 3
Centre for Propulsion Engineering, Cranfield University, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom
2
Faculty of Engineering, Environment and Computing, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom
1
Corresponding author
E-mail:
1
adnan.althubaiti@cranfield.ac.uk,
2
ac1027@coventry.ac.uk,
3
j.a.amaral.teixeira@cranfield.ac.uk
Received 1 June 2021; received in revised form 22 September 2021; accepted 4 October 2021
DOI https://doi.org/10.21595/jve.2021.22100
Copyright © 2021 Adnan Althubiti, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract. There is an ever-increasing need to optimise bearing lifetime and maintenance cost
through detecting faults at earlier stages. This can be achieved through improving diagnosis and
prognosis of bearing faults to better determine bearing remaining useful life (RUL). Until now
there has been limited research into the prognosis of bearing life in rotating machines. Towards
the development of improved approaches to prognosis of bearing faults a review of fault diagnosis
and health management systems research is presented. Traditional time and frequency domain
extraction techniques together with machine learning algorithms, both traditional and deep
learning, are considered as novel approaches for the development of new prognosis techniques.
Different approaches make use of the advantages of each technique while overcoming the
disadvantages towards the development of intelligent systems to determine the RUL of bearings.
The review shows that while there are numerous approaches to diagnosis and prognosis, they are
suitable for certain cases or are domain specific and cannot be generalised.
Keywords: Bearing faults, time/frequency analysis, machine learning, diagnosis, prognosis,
remaining useful life.
1. Introduction
In recent years, condition monitoring, fault diagnosis and prognosis of equipment have become
of increasing concern to industries using rotating machines. Early fault detection in rotating
machines can avoid risks of damage and thus save expensive emergency repair costs. When
operating as expected, all mechanical and electrical systems create a characteristic signal. If the
operating conditions of a machine changes, this will lead to variance in that signal. In fact,
differences in a normal signal can be considered an indication of an incipient fault. However, these
changes may be so small that the signals are masked by the ambient noise produced by the
system’s normal operation [1].
Machine Condition Monitoring (CM) is the procedure of monitoring several parameters being
an indication of the mechanical condition of a rotating machine whilst it is in operation, such as
vibration and temperature. Most new Condition Monitoring Systems are comprised of sensors and
a system for acquiring data, integrated with software for signal analysis.
A reliable online machinery CM system permits maintenance or corrective actions to be
scheduled to prevent degradation of the machine’s performance, malfunctions, or even
catastrophic failure [2]. The key purpose of a CM strategy is to enable immediate detection of any
new damage in rotating machinery, such as bearings or gears. After the initial detection the CM
should determine the location of the fault and its severity and predict the RUL of the component.
CM offers the following benefits [3, 4]:
1) Avoid catastrophic failure, unscheduled maintenance and loss of production.
2) Reduce maintenance costs by minimising unnecessary interventions and overhauls.
3) Increase lifespan of components.