Two-stage feature selection for bearing fault diagnosis based on dual-tree complex wavelet transform and empirical mode decomposition

Abstract

This paper presents an automatic fault diagnosis of different rolling element bearing faults using a dual-tree complex wavelet transform, empirical mode decomposition, and a novel two-stage feature selection technique. In this method, dual-tree complex wavelet transform and empirical mode decomposition were used to preprocess the original vibration signal to obtain more accurate fault characteristic information. Then, features in the time domain were extracted from each of the original signals, the coefficients of the dual-tree complex wavelet transform, and some useful intrinsic mode functions to generate a rich combined feature set. Next, a two-stage feature selection algorithm was proposed to generate the smallest set of features that leads to the superior classification accuracy. In the first stage of the two-stage feature selection, we found the candidate feature set using the distance evaluation technique and a k-nearest neighbor classifier. In the second stage, a genetic algorithm-based k-nearest neighbor classifier was designed to obtain the superior combination of features from the candidate feature set with respect to the classification accuracy and number of feature inputs. Finally, the selected features were used as the input to a k-nearest neighbor classifier to evaluate the system diagnosis performance. The experimental results obtained from real bearing vibration signals demonstrated that the method combining dual-tree complex wavelet transform, empirical mode decomposition, and the two-stage feature selection technique is effective in both feature extraction and feature selection, which also increase classification accuracy.