Vibration Based Condition Assessment of Rolling element Bearings with Localized Defects

Rolling element bearings are one of the major machinery components used in industries like power plants, chemical plants and automotive industries that require precise and efficient performance. Condition monitoring of these bearings is important to avoid failures. Several vibration monitoring techniques are available. Vibration analysis gets much advantage in factories as a predictive maintenance technique. In this study, vibration response of the rolling bearings to the defects on outer race, inner race and the rolling elements is obtained and analyzed. It shows that every defect excites the system at its characteristic frequency. The location of the faults is indicated by the FFT spectrum. Additionally, kurtosis, one of the statistical parameters is evaluated for the above cases of the bearing. The results reveal that vibration based monitoring method is successful in detecting the faults in the bearing.