Optimized statistical parameters of acoustic emission signals for monitoring of rolling element bearings

Acoustic emission (AE) signal generated from artificial defects in rolling element bearings are investigated using experimental measurements in this paper. Rolling element bearings are crucial parts of many machines and there has been an increasing demand to find effective and reliable health monitoring technique and advanced signal processing to detect and diagnose the size and location of incipient defects. Condition monitoring of rolling element bearings, comprises four main stages which are, statistical analysis, faults diagnostics, defect size calculation, and prognostics. In this paper, the effect of defect size, operating speed, and loading conditions on statistical parameters of AE signals, using design of experiment method, have been investigated to select the most sensitive parameters for diagnosing incipient faults and defect growth on rolling element bearings.