The Early Diagnosis of Rolling Bearings’ Faults Using Fractional Fourier Transform Information Fusion and a Lightweight Neural Network

Abstract

In response to challenges associated with feature extraction and diagnostic models’ complexity in the early diagnosis of bearings’ faults, this paper presents an innovative approach for the early fault diagnosis of rolling bearings. This method combined concepts from frequency domain signal analysis with lightweight neural networks. To begin, vibration signals from rolling bearings were collected using vibration sensors, and the mean square value was utilized as an indicator for accurate early fault signal extraction. Subsequently, employing the fractional Fourier transform, the time domain signal was converted into a frequency domain signal, which provided more detailed frequency feature information. The fusion process combined amplitude frequency and phase frequency information, and was visualized as a Gram angle field map. The lightweight neural network Xception was selected as the primary fault diagnosis tool. Xception, a convolutional neural network (CNN) variant, was chosen for its lightweight design, which maintains excellent performance while significantly reducing model parameters. The experimental results demonstrated that the Xception model excelled in rolling bearing fault diagnosis, particularly when utilizing fused information datasets. This outcome underscores the advantages of combining information fusion and the Xception model to enhance the accuracy of early rolling bearing fault diagnosis, and offers a viable solution for health monitoring and fault diagnosis in industrial settings.