Fault diagnosis of a gearbox using the sliced Wigner fourth order time frequency method smoothed by a new kernel function

Abstract

The detection of impulsive signals embedded in the broadband noise is useful for the fault diagnosis of a gearbox. The sliced Wigner fourth-order time frequency method (SWFOTFM) has been used for the detection of impulsive signals embedded in the broadband noise. However, one disadvantage of SWFOTFM is that the non-oscillating cross-terms cannot be smoothed by conventional kernel functions. In this paper, a new kernel function is developed to reduce the non-oscillation cross-terms. The SWFOTFM using the new kernel function is successfully applied to the fault diagnosis of a gearbox.