Condition Monitoring of Low Speed Slewing Bearings Based on Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition Method

Abstract

Vibration condition monitoring of low-speed rotational slewing bearings is essential ever since it became necessary for a proper maintenance schedule that replaces the slewing bearings installed in massive machinery in the steel industry, among other applications. So far, acoustic emission(AE) is still the primary technique used for dealing with low-speed bearing cases. Few studies employed vibration analysis because the signal generated as a result of the impact between the rolling element and the natural defect spots at low rotational speeds is generally weak and sometimes buried in noise and other interference frequencies. In order to increase the impact energy, some researchers generate artificial defects with a predetermined length, width, and depth of crack on the inner or outer race surfaces. Consequently, the fault frequency of a particular fault is easy to identify. This paper presents the applications of empirical mode decomposition(EMD) and ensemble empirical mode decomposition(EEMD) for measuring vibration signals slewing bearings running at a low rotational speed of 15rpm. The natural vibration damage data used in this paper are obtained from a Korean industrial company. In this study, EEMD is used to support and clarify the results of the fast Fourier transform(FFT) in identifying bearing fault frequencies.