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Condition Based Monitoring and

Diagnosis of Rotating Electrical Machines
Bearings Using FFT and Wavelet
Analysis
Ioan COZORICI, Ioan VDAN and Horia BALAN
Abstract: Condition Based Monitoring of rotating electrical machines is usually based on vibration signal analysis. In the presence
of a mechanical or electrical failure, vibration signals contain periodic pulses with a characteristic frequency corresponding to a
certain fault. However, due to higher noise levels present in industrial applications, feature extraction of vibration signals requires
the use of appropriate techniques. This paper describes the use of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Wavelet Analysis (WA) as a
technique to detect bearing faults of rotating electrical machines.
Keywords: wavelet, FFT, bearing, vibration analysis.

1.

INTRODUCTION

Rotating machinery is widely used in todays

industry. Condition based monitoring and diagnosis is
a process that can be used to detect early electrical and
mechanical faults, leading to a significant reduction of
maintenance costs. In the literature are described
various methods for monitoring electrical machinery
[1]. In this paper we turn our attention to monitoring
and diagnosis methods based on vibration signal
analysis. The literature describes several methods for
monitoring faults using time domain analysis [2, 3],
frequency domain analysis [4] and time-frequency
analysis [18].
The outcome of rotating electrical machines
vibration analysis, depends largely on the vibration
signal processing techniques used. Using an appropriate
signal processing technique, it is possible to detect
variations of vibration signals caused by defective
components. Classical vibration signals analysis was
generally based on spectrum analysis using FFT, which.
is suitable for stationary signal processing, but provides
a poor representation of signals in time domain and thus
is unsuitable for nonstationary signals analysis.
The above mentioned problems could be resolved
by using WA [5]. Wavelet functions are composed of a
family of basic functions that are able to represent a
signal in time (or space) and frequency (or scale). The

Manuscript received November 12, 2012. This paper was supported

by the project "Doctoral studies in engineering sciences for
developing the knowledge based society-SIDOC contract no
POSDRU/88/1.5/S/60078, project co-funded from European Social
Fund through Sectorial Operational Program Human Resources 20072013.

main advantage of using wavelet transform is the

ability to perform local analysis of a signal.
In this paper a comparison between FFT and WA
will be made in order to illustrate the usefulness of WA
in the detection and diagnosis of rotating electrical
machines faults.
Some of the most common faults of electric
machines are bearing faults. Bearings vibration can lead
to malfunction, resulting in downtime of the whole
system operation and significant economic losses [6].
Lately WT techniques were used to analyze nonstationary vibration signals generated by the rolling
elements of bearings [7, 8]. In [9] the author used WT
for identifying faults on the bearing outer race. In
another study [10] the authors studied the bandwidth
properties of the bearing vibration and applied WT to
identify the bearing faults. These studies have shown
that time-frequency analysis of vibration signals
provides a wide range of information regarding bearing
components.
In addition to well-established bearing monitoring
techniques of induction motors [13], in [11] the authors
present a method for fault diagnosis of induction
generators by using wavelet packet decomposition of
the stator current. This method can be successfully used
to identify faults in the rotor and stator as shown in [12]
where the study was carried on a motor on two working
situations, in good condition and with a provoked rotor
fault. Given the nonstationary nature of the current the
use of WT offered a better resolution under variable
load. Therefore, WA is a powerful alternative for
nonstationary signal analysis whose spectral features
vary over time and is also suitable for vibration signals
analysis of whose components of short duration and

2012 Mediamira Science Publisher. All rights reserved.

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Volume 53, Number 4, 2012

high frequency are located close together in time, and

those whose components of long duration are located
closely in frequency domain [14].

2.

| ( )|

FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM (FFT)

The Fast Fourier Transform is a computerized

mathematical algorithm used for transforming vibration
signals from the time domain (time waveform) into the
frequency domain.
Fourier amplitude spectrum A(f) corresponding to
the signal frequency f(t) can be obtained as [10]:
( )

( )

(1)

By means of this analysis, a correlation of

variations in the vibration signal and different faults of
the equipment can be achieved [22].
Fourier transform, considers all systems as being
linear and because of that all frequency spectrum is
allocated to the linear part, thus neglecting the
nonlinearities of any kind.
FFT is helpful in diagnosing faults associated with
unbalance, misalignment, eccentric components and
damaged bearings, shafts, gears or motor electrical
faults [23],[26].
There are some cases where it is not advisable to
use spectral analysis for the analysis of vibration
signals, as in the case of very low frequency signals
acquired from shafts with low rotational speed.
3.

any analytical expression, have a finite duration and the

mean value is always zero (4). By the means of
computed wavelet coefficients we can reconstruct the
original x (t) signal.

( )

(5)

Since the wavelet coefficients appreciate the

similarity between signal x (t) and wavelet function, the
main problem of applying CWT consists of the
appropriate selection of mother wavelet function.
In [18], the author suggests using Morlet wavelet
function to detect periodic pulses corresponding to
bearing faults. The author shows that by using Morlet
wavelet function is achieved a high level of correlation
between x(t) and ( ).
CWT has a very high precision, but in practice is
preferred the use of DWT due to its reduced computing
time. To implement the DWT, one could use discrete
filter banks to compute discrete wavelet coefficients
Figure 2. Low pass filters remove high-frequency
fluctuations from the signal and their outputs provide
an approximation of the signal. High pass filters
preserve high-frequency fluctuations of the signal and.
their outputs provide detail information about the
signal. The outputs of low pass filters and high pass
filters define the approximation coefficients and detail
coefficients, respectively.

WAVELET TRANSFORM

Study and analysis of wavelets has grown

exponentially in the field of mathematics and
engineering research, with some undeniable advantages
to Fourier analysis [15]. Wavelet function is defined as
[17]:
( )

(2)

where a is the scale parameter and b is the translation

parameter.
There are two types of wavelet transform:
continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and discrete
wavelet transform (DWT). Mathematically, the CWT
calculates the inner products of a continuous signal x(t)
with a set of continuous wavelets according to the
following equation:
(

( )

(3)

Decomposition of (t) must be quick enough to

ensure analysis in time / space and frequency. Also,
wavelet function must satisfy the following condition
[16]:

| ( )|

(4)

where ( ) is the Fourier transform of (t) and

is a
constant that depends on the chosen wavelet function.
Unlike the sine functions, wavelet functions are a
class of asymmetric functions that are not described by

Fig. 1. Wavelet decomposition tree [24].

Total number of decomposition levels can be

calculated with the following equation:
(

( )

(6)

where Nn is the number of levels, and fS is the sampling

frequency.
4.

CASE STUDY

Beside the use in rotating electric machines

bearings are widely used in industrial applications. An
unexpected failure of a bearing can cause significant
economic losses. It is therefore very important that
bearing faults to be detected in early stages of
development.
In the presence of mechanical or electrical
failures, vibration signals contain periodic pulses with a
characteristic frequency corresponding to a certain type
of fault [21].

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In most cases acquired vibration signals from

piezoelectric accelerometers have complex and nonstationary character. Most of the techniques used for
bearing monitoring use vibration analysis, but there are
some techniques using acoustic monitoring [19] or
motor current signal analysis [20].
A careful analysis of a rolling bearing elements
shows that there are four predominant frequencies
generated by bearings:
BPFO Bearing Outer Race Frequency
BPFI Bearing Inner Race Frequency
BSF Ball Spin Frequency
FTF Fundamental Train Frequency.
These frequencies and multiples of these
frequencies show up as spikes on a vibration analysis
spectrum when bearings begin to fail (Table 1) and they
are determined using the shaft rotational speed and the
dimensions of the bearing elements. A vast majority of
bearing failures are associated with the bearing inner
and outer race. Since the characteristic fault frequencies
have a certain periodicity in the vibration spectrum,
these frequencies can provide good information on fault
location.

Fig. 3. Bearing with outer race fault.

acquisition board. Signals were processed using a

virtual instrument developed in the LabView.
In the experiment we used a 6203 ball bearing
type Z. The fault on the bearing outer race was
simulated by drilling two holes with diameter of 4 mm
each (Fig. 4).

Table 1. Bearing fault frequencies.[25]

Fault

Equation

Significance

BPFO

BPFI

For an effective diagnosis of bearing faults is very

important to isolate the characteristic fault frequencies
of the original signal from the other insignificant
components.
Acquired vibration signals are shown in Figure 5.

BSF

FTF

Fig. 4. Acquired vibration signals: a) good bearing; b) faulty bearing.

) ]

n = nr. de bile
fr= rev./s (rel)

In this paper a comparison is made between WT

and FFT as failure detection techniques with a focus on
diagnosis of bearings for rotating electrical machines.
To exemplify these diagnostic techniques using
FFT and WT, we analyzed the vibration signals of a
0.37 kW motor in two situations: with the bearings in
good condition and with a provoked fault on the
bearing outer race.
Fig. 5. Spectral analysis of vibration signal of good bearing (a) and
faulty bearing (b).

Fig. 2. Vibration measuring setup.

In figure 3 is presented the setup used for signals

acquisition. The setup consists of a KD 45 piezoelectric
accelerometer, a charge amplifier, the NI 6100

As we can see in figure 6 it is very hard to identify

and differentiate the fault frequencies, just by analyzing
the frequency spectrum, due to the amount of noise
present in vibration signal.
In order to remove the noise from vibration signal
a wavelet thresholding technique was applied which
removes or keeps some of the wavelet coefficients.
Using the DWT with symlet of order N = 2, these

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4.
5.

6.

7.
8.

Fig. 6. Denoised signals and their corresponding scalogram of good

bearing (a) and the faulty one (b).

signals were decomposed on 4 levels. Elimination of

noise was achieved using hard thresholding technique
that produces very large oscillations near the
discontinuity points. By using wavelet analysis all
irrelevant noise was successfully removed from the
input without using additional filters.
The CWT was applied for the signal
reconstruction and for scalogram plot.
In Figure 6 are presented the results after applying
the DWT. In scalogram (b) corresponding to vibration
signal of the faulty bearing, can be observed that in
addition to bearing fundamental frequency there are
highly emphasized the outer race fault frequencies of
the bearing, which are not present in scalogram (a)
corresponding to vibration signal of the good bearing.
5.

CONCLUSIONS

This paper described the use of Wavelet analysis

and detection of different technical faults occurring in
bearings of rotating electrical machines. This method
proves to be reliable in fault diagnosis and it provides a
good resolution for identifying of bearing faults.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.
18.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This paper was supported by the project "Doctoral
studies in engineering sciences for developing the
knowledge based society-SIDOC contract no
POSDRU/88/1.5/S/60078, project co-funded from
European Social Fund through Sectorial Operational
Program Human Resources 2007-2013.

19.

20.

21.

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25. http://www.ntnamerica.com/website/documents/brochures-andliterature/tech-sheets-and-supplements/frequencies.pdf
26. http://www.pruftechnik.com.

Drd. ing. Ioan COZORICI

Prof. dr. ing. Ioan VDAN
Prof. dr. ing. Horia BALAN
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca
Department of Energetics and Management
Faculty of Electrical Engineering