Bearing fault detection through multiscale wavelet scalogram-based SPC

Vibration-based fault detection and condition monitoring of rotating machinery, using statistical process control (SPC) combined with statistical pattern recognition methodology, has been widely investigated by many researchers. In particular, the discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is considered as a powerful tool for feature extraction in detecting fault on rotating machinery. Although DWT significantly reduces the dimensionality of the data, the number of retained wavelet features can still be significantly large. Then, the use of standard multivariate SPC techniques is not advised, because the sample covariance matrix is likely to be singular, so that the common multivariate statistics cannot be calculated. Even though many feature-based SPC methods have been introduced to tackle this deficiency, most methods require a parametric distributional assumption that restricts their feasibility to specific problems of process control, and thus limit their application. This study proposes a nonparametric multivariate control chart method, based on multiscale wavelet scalogram (MWS) features, that overcomes the limitation posed by the parametric assumption in existing SPC methods. The presented approach takes advantage of multi-resolution analysis using DWT, and obtains MWS features with significantly low dimensionality. We calculate Hotelling's T² -type monitoring statistic using MWS, which has enough damage-discrimination ability. A bootstrap approach is used to determine the upper control limit of the monitoring statistic, without any distributional assumption. Numerical simulations demonstrate the performance of the proposed control charting method, under various damage-level scenarios for a bearing system.