Phase-Aware Complex-Spectrogram Autoencoder for Vibration Preprocessing: Fault-Component Separation via Input-Phasor Orthogonality Regularization

Abstract

We propose a phase-aware complex-spectrogram autoencoder (AE) for preprocessing raw vibration signals of rotating electrical machines. The AE reconstructs normal components and separates fault components as residuals, guided by an input-phasor phase-orthogonality regularization that defines parallel/orthogonal residuals with respect to the local signal phase. We use a U-Net-based AE with a mask-bias head to refine local magnitude and phase. Decisions are based on residual features-magnitude/shape, frequency distribution, and projections onto the normal manifold. Using the AI Hub open dataset from field ventilation motors, we evaluate eight representative motor cases (2.2-5.5 kW: misalignment, unbalance, bearing fault, belt looseness). The preprocessing yielded clear residual patterns (low-frequency floor rise, resonance-band peaks, harmonic-neighbor spikes), and achieved an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC) = 0.998-1.000 across eight cases, with strong leave-one-file-out generalization and good calibration (expected calibration error (ECE) <= 0.023). The results indicate that learning to remove normal structure while enforcing phase consistency provides an unsupervised front-end that enhances fault evidence while preserving interpretability on field data.