Proceedings of the American Control Conference
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania June 1998
Detection of Common earing Faults Using Frequency-Domain
Vibration Signals and a Neural Network Based Approach
Bo Li
bli@eos.ncsu.edu
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Box 791 1, North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-791 1, USA
Abstract
Bearings and their vibration play an important role in the
performance of all motor systems. In many cases, the
accuracy of the instruments and devices used to monitor
and control the motor system is highly dependent on the
dynamic performance of the motor bearings. In addition,
many problems arising in motor operation are linked to
bearing faults. Thus, fault detection of a motor system is
inseparably related to the diagnosis of the bearing
assembly. This paper presents an approach of using neural
networks to detect common bearing defects from motor
vibration data. The results show that neural networks can
be an efective agent in the detection of various motor
bearing faults through the measurement and interpretation
of motor bearing vibration signals.
Keywords: Bearing Vibration, Fault Detection, Neural
Network
1. Introduction
The maintenance of modem rotating machinery is
highly related to the preservation of bearings, due to the
relative commonality of their faults. Therefore, since most
of the phenomena occurring in the bearing assemblies of
motors are in some way represented as motor vibration,
one of the most important signals to consider in most
motor fault detection schemes is motor bearing vibration.
Properly monitoring bearing vibration in a motor system is
highly cost-effective in minimizing motor downtime; both
by providing advance warning for appropriate actions to be
taken and by ensuring that the system does not deteriorate
to a condition where emergency action is required [I-31.
Signals measured by vibration sensors are generally
compared to reference signals in order to interpret the
bearing condition. Methods to analyze these signals
include: probabilistic analysis[81, frequency-domain signal
analysis[4-11], time-domain signal analysis[8], and
waveform analysis[8]. Among these, the frequency-
domain signal analysis approach, which is also the basic
tool used in some of the other approaches, such as
probabilistic analysis, is the most popular method due to
the availability of the Fourier Transform technique.
$10.000 1 998 AACC
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Gregory Goddu Mo-Yuen Chow
gpgoddu@eos.ncsu.edu chow@eos.ncsu.edu
In the motor fault detection process, as shown in Figure
1, the sensors collect time domain vibration signals. The
Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique is then employed
to convert the time domain signals into frequency domain
signals, which can provide salient features for the
diagnosis of the bearing condition. The diagnostic expert
then uses both time domain and frequency domain signals
to study the conditions of motor operation and determine
what defects are present in the motor [6].
Time Frequency domain
bearing vibration bearing vibration
sienal
signal
Bearing
Motor and
Assembly
I FFT
Transformer
t Exp'sDiagnosis
Figure 1. The flow of signals in a typical motor bearing fault
detection process.
This paper applies neural networks to the detection of
motor bearing conditions based on the frequency features
of bearing vibration. Neural networks have proven ability
in the area of nonlinear pattern classification. After being
trained, they contain expert knowledge and can correctly
identify the different causes of bearing vibration. The
results show that a neural network bearing vibration
detector can satisfactorily replace motor experts for this
problem and give accurate information about the condition
of the motor bearing given vibration data.
2. Fundamental Bearing Vibration Features
2.1. Five Basic Frequencies Related to Rolling
Bearing Dynamic Movement
Rolling bearings generally consist of two concentric
rings with a set of rolling elements running in their tracks.
These two rings are called the outer raceway and inner
raceway, respectively. Standard shapes of rolling elements
include the ball, cylindrical roller, tapered roller, needle
roller, and symmetrical and unsymmetrical barrel roller
[9,10]. Usually, the rolling elements in a bearing are
2032
guided in a cage that ensures uniform spacing and prevents
mutual contact.
There are five basic motions that can be used to
describe the dynamics of a bearing movement and each
motion generates a unique frequency response. These five
frequencies, shown in Figure 2, are defined as: shaft
rotational frequency ( f,), fundamental cage frequency
( f F C F ) , ball pass outer raceway frequency ( f B p o F ), ball
pass inner raceway frequency ( f B p l F ), and ball rotational
frequency (f,).
Figure 2. The basic frequencies in a bearing.
In the following derivations, as shown in Figure 3, f , ,
f, and f, represent the rotating frequency of the inner
raceway, ball center and outer raceway respectively. D~ is
the ball diameter, 0, is the cage diameter of the bearing
and is measured from a ball center to the opposite ball
center, and B is the contact angle of bearing.
'. e I
......... ..
-
D~~
Figure 3. The structure of a ball bearing.
1. Shaft Rotational Frequency ( f,)
As bearings are often used to form a bearing-rotor system,
the rotational frequency of the rotor (or shaft), f,, is very
important to the movements of bearings. In a steady state
motor operating condition, the bearing outer raceway can
be assumed stationary, while the inner raceway is rotating
at the speed of the shaft, i.e. f, = 0 and f , = f, .
2. Fundamental Cage Frequency ( f F c F )
The fundamental cage frequency, fFCF, is the rotational
frequency of the cage. In a motor, f F c , can be expressed
as[5,7,8,11]:
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3. Ball Pass Outer Raceway Frequency ( f B p o F )
The ball pass outer raceway frequency, ,rBpo,, indicates
the rate at which the balls pass a point on .the track of the
outer raceway. The quantity of f B p o , is equal to the
number of bearing balls, N , , multiplied by the difference
between the fundamental cage frequency, f F c F , and the
outer raceway frequency, f,. In the motor, f,,,, is
calculated as[5,7,8,11]:
fBPOF = NBlfFCF -fol*
4. Ball Pass Inner Raceway Frequency ( f,,,, )
Similar to the ball pass outer raceway frequency, f,,, ,
the ball pass inner raceway frequency, f B p l F , is defined as
the rate at which the balls pass a point on 'the track of the
inner raceway. The quantity of f,,,, can be computed by
multiplying the number of bearing balls, N,, by the
difference between the inner raceway frequency, A , and
the fundamental cage frequency, fFcF [5,7,8,11]. In
motors, this frequency is:
fBPlF = NBlfFCF
(3)
5. Ball Rotational Frequency ( f,)
The ball rotational frequency, f, ,is the rate of the rotation
....
of a ball about its own axis in a bearing. f E can be
calculated in a motor as[5,7,8,11]:
(4)
2.2. Bearing Vibration Characteristics
All frequencies present in the spectrurn of a bearing
vibration must have been generated by some source. In
practice, these sources exist in the form of some inherent
defect in, or looseness of, the bearings [5,7,8,11].
For defects on the raceway of a rolling bearing, each
time a roller hits the defective raceway, the: corresponding
ball pass inner raceway frequency, f B p l F or ball pass outer
raceway frequency, f B p o F 7 will be generated. If the
defective area is large, harmonics of f B , or f , , will
also be present. The existence of these harmonics can help
to indicate the severity of the defect.
2033
 The roller hits both the inner raceway and outer defects on the inner raceway and rolling element using
raceway each time it spins on its own axis. Therefore, for MOTORSIM.
defects on the roller, twice the ball rotational frequency
( 2 f B ) and the fundamental cage frequency ( f F c F ) will
(I!,, , , , , , , , , , .
usually be generated. In most cases, these frequencies will 0.W

3 am
be modulated with other existing frequencies and result in -0 05
a more complicated spectrum.
The simplest spectrum for bearing vibration is the d I’

spectrum caused by bearing looseness. Only fundamental

cage frequency ( f F c F ) or shaft rotational frequency ( f,)
and their harmonics exist for this case. Table 1 lists the Figure 4.The bearing vibration signal generated by MotorSIM.
bearing vibration frequency characteristics for various
faults. 3.Neural Network Approach to Motor
Table 1. Vibration frequency characteristics. Bearing Fault Detection
Location of defects I Frequency I Observations
3.1. Extraction of Bearing Vibration
Bearing looseness
Characteristics
’
f S fFCF

Modulated by Table 1 shows that the vibration generated by defects in

Rolling elements fBPlF ’fapOF 2fB ’f F C F
An increase in the
Inner raceway fBPIF
severity of the defects
results in higher order
harmonics being
Outer raceway fBPlJF produced.
2.3. Simulation of Motor Bearing Faults and
Vibration
In the design and study of motor fault detection
schemes, it is important to determine if the designed fault
detection algorithm is able to correctly classify different
motor fault conditions. Using a well-controlled fault data
environment, such as one obtained from a computer
simulation, to verify the fault detection algorithm’s
performance capability is essential. In this study, the
authors use the Fast Prototype Motor Simulation software,
MOTORSIM,[3] to simulate and design the bearing
vibration detection algorithm.
MOTORSIMis a MATLAB-SIMULINK based program
that provides a framework for in-depth simulation of motor
dynamics. Although motor simulation software cannot
completely model all real-world situations, a computer
simulation can assist in several aspects of motor operation
and control. MOTORSIMcan be used to generate
appropriate motor data, with different operating and
loading conditions, in a cost effective and time efficient
manner.
A significant amount of motor research has focused on
vibration analysis to detect motor bearing conditions.
MOTORSIM can generate time-domain vibration signals for
different conditions of bearing failure by incorporating a
bearing wear sub-module into the motor base module. The
results have been verified by comparison to real-world
vibration signals[6]. Figure 4 shows a bearing vibration
signal generated by simulating bearing looseness and
the bearing will show one, or some combination of several,
of the five basic frequencies. Many different literatures
[5,7,8,11]have discussed the usage of these five basic
frequencies to identify defects in a bearing. In the normal
motor fault detection process, as shown in Figure 1, the
expert will survey the time-domain signal and the
frequency spectra of bearing vibration to determine if there
are any defects within the bearing. However, a problem
with using engineers for vibration analysis is that this
experience, which is gained over a period of many years, is
a very expensive and inefficient use of resources.
Therefore, if we can train a neural network to learn the
knowledge of the vibration expert, we can reduce the cost
of fault detection and improve the efficiency. The general
structure of this neural network based motor bearing fault
detection system is shown in Figure 5.
~ i m ke m a i n Frequency Domain
~ ~ a r i vibration
ne Bearing Vibration
Motor and Neural Network
FFT
Beanng
Assembly
Bearing Fault
Detector
Figure 5. Neural Network Motor Bearing Fault Detection
System.
MOTORSIMis used to generate vibration signals with
varying severity for each of seven different bearing
defects. These are the vibrations caused by bearing
looseness, by defects on the inner raceway, by defects on
the rolling element, and combinations of the above. Each
signal consists of 2048 sampling points with a sampling
time of 0.0005 seconds. An FFT is performed to extract
the main characteristics of these vibration signals. This
procedure is shown in equation (5),

2034

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where N=2048 and d(n),0 s 2 N - 1 denotes the time-
domain data generated by MOTORSIM.The power
spectrum of the vibration is obtained as follows:
P(0)= lD(O)l', (6)
P(k)=[D(k)12+ I D ( N - k 1 2 ] k=1,2,...,--1,
N (7)
2 network is sufficiently trained and the weights have been
Next, we construct basic frequency amplitude vectors to
represent different bearing vibrations. These vectors are
created from the power spectrum of the vibration signal
and consist of the five basic frequencies; with varying
amplitudes based on the defect present. Since the spectral
components near the five basic frequencies are also
important, when generating the vector we consider a
frequency band of lOHz for each basic frequency. That is,
frequency band = - 5, f + 51 (9)
where f is the basic frequency.
For the five different basic frequencies, the basic
frequency amplitude vector and its elements can be
represented as:
where T, is the sampling time.
where
P= y
k=O
P(k).
In this paper, the authors use MOTORSIM to simulate the
vibration of a ball bearing with the following parameters:
Db = 0.5 in., N , = 9, 0, = 2.559in.,O = 0. The motor speed
is 1500 RPM. The five basic frequencies are: fs = 2 5 ~ 2 ,
fFcF = 10.056H2, fBpoF = 90.5H.z9 fBpIF = 1 3 4 . 5 H ,
fBsF = 61.5&. Amplitudes of these frequencies vary based
on the fault induced.
3.2 Feedforward Neural Networks
The capacity of artificial neural networks to mimic and
automate human expertise is what makes them ideal for
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handling non-linear systems. Neural networks are able to
learn expert knowledge by being trained using a
representative set of data [1,2]. At the beginning of a
neural network's training session, the neural network fault
detector's diagnosis of the motor's condition will not be
accurate. An error quantity is measured and used to adjust
the neural network's intemal parameters in order to
produce a more accurate output decision. Once the
saved, the neural network contains all the necessary
knowledge to perform the fault detection.
Our neural network will have five input measurements
corresponding to the amplitudes of the five basic
frequencies of interest and three output fault detectors
(bearing looseness, defects on the inner raceway, defects
on the rolling element). MotorSIM can be used to generate
the five basic frequencies under different fault conditions.
After the network has been sufficiently trained with this
data, it has the ability to identify different bearing faults
from the vibration signal.
3.3 Fault Detection and Results
The performance of the motor bearing fault detector, a
three-layer network with 10 hidden nodes, was tested using
the data generated by MOTORSIM and is given in Table 3.
From each of the seven possible fault combinations, one,
two, or three input data sets were chosen in order to
generate smaller training data sets, of 7,14, and 21
frequency sets, respectively, from the original testing data
set, of 63 frequency sets. The s u e of the training data sets
was varied so as to show how this variable can effect
results. In order to demonstrate robustness, each of the
three training sets was run for 100 iterations with the
results averaged. A learning rate of 0.01 and momentum
of 0.3 was selected for all cases based on the experience of
the authors. Hence, the form of the neural network is
N,,,,J, with q=O.Ol and a=0.3.
Table 3. The average performance of the neural network motor
1
(17) Training
time
{epochs)
341.95
~ and
2479.15
3344.69
As should be expected, both the accuracy and training
time increased as the size of the training set was magnified.
2035
This method of neural network based motor bearing fault
detection has proven to be very accurate with as little as
two sets of basic frequency amplitude measurements for
each of the seven fault types.
4. Conclusion
A method of using neural networks to interpret
vibration signals of electric motors in order to detect
bearing faults was presented. Using the frequency
spectrum of the vibration signal to train an artificial neural
network, the authors were able to achieve excellent results
with minimal data. Due to the high probability of bearing
defects occurring in electric motors and the widespread use
of these motors in modem industry, this method of non-
invasive fault detection can be of great use for all motor
related topics.
5. Future Research
From the research done in this paper, we now know
that neural networks are capable of high detection
accuracy of bearing defects using frequency spectrum
signals. By additionally incorporating the time domain
signal, specifically the presence of peak amplitudes, the
severity of the defect should be ascertainable. Eventually,
this hybrid frequency and time-domain approach should
give further insight into the presence and severity of motor
bearing faults. This information will be highly useful for
the maintenance of rotating machinery in industrial
applications.
2036
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6. Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the
National Science Foundation, for Grant ECS-952 1609.
7. References
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Application and Design Consideration of Artificial Neural
Network Fault Detectors,” IEEE Transactions on Industrial
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[2]M.-Y. Chow and P. V. Goode, “Using a Neural/Fuzzy
System to Extract Heuristic Knowledge from a Fault
Detection Problem,” presented at IEEE Intemational
Conference On Fuzzy Systems, 1994.
[3]M.-Y. Chow, S. Altug, and B. Li, “Motor System Time
Domain Fast Prototype Software Simulation,” National
Symposiumon Electric Machine, Newport, RI, 1997.
[4]G. Lipovszky, K. Solyomvari, and G. Varga, Vibration
Testing of Machines and Their Maintenance, first edition,
Elsevier, 1990.
[5]K. Ragulskis and A. Yurkauskas, Vibration ofBearings, first
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[6]J. I. Taylor, The Vibration Analysis Handbook, first edition,
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[7]T. A. Harris, Rolling Bearing Analysis, third edition, John
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[8]H. Ohta and N. Sugimoto, “Vibration Characteristics of
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[9]A. Palmgren, Ball and Roller Bearing Engineering, S . H.
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