Experimental Studies on Outer Race Fault Diagnosis of Rolling Element Bearings

Abstract

Rolling element bearing condition monitoring and fault diagnosis can predict the condition of bearing and its components such as outer race, inner race, rolling elements and cage at any given instant. Online condition monitoring is more advanced and preferred over conventional methods. Advanced signal processing techniques and statistical analysis techniques aid in the component level fault prediction, its severity, interaction of different defect frequencies and remaining life of the component in a given system. However, the basic concept in most of the techniques is vibration data acquisition and identification of amplitude of vibration at defect frequencies. In this paper, the basic concepts of bearing defect frequencies are discussed and shown experimentally the presence of these frequencies. In experimentation 50mm diameter bearings with different faults are mounted on a simple test rig and vibration data is acquired under different loads at 2500 rpm. A simple frequency domain has been carried out to identify the defect.