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Remaining useful life prediction of ball-bearings based on high-frequency

vibration features

Article  in  ARCHIVE Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part C Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science 1989-1996 (vols 203-210) · November 2017
DOI: 10.1177/0954406217734885

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Original Article

Proc IMechE Part C:

J Mechanical Engineering Science
Remaining useful life prediction of 2018, Vol. 232(18) 3224–3234
! IMechE 2017

ball-bearings based on high-frequency Article reuse guidelines:

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vibration features DOI: 10.1177/0954406217734885

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Mehdi Behzad1, Hesam Addin Arghand1 and

Abbas Rohani Bastami2

Abstract
Selecting appropriate features from the vibration condition monitoring data of ball-bearings is one of the main challenges
in the application of data-driven methods for remaining useful life prediction purpose. In this article, a new feature based
on the high-frequency vibration of ball-bearings is proposed. The feed forward neural network will be used for training
and prediction. The experimental data of the bearing accelerated life in the PROGNOSTIA test (published in PHM 2012
IEEE conference) are used to verify the method. The results obtained by applying new features are compared with those
of two popular features in the time domain (RMS and kurtosis) for prognostic purpose. Applying the proposed feature
shows more accurate estimation of the bearings’ remaining useful life.

Keywords
Prognostics, data-driven methods, feature, high-frequency vibrations, ball-bearing

Date received: 21 January 2017; accepted: 5 September 2017

developed a robust method to predict the RUL of

Introduction
Accurate failure time estimation of mechanical
components plays a significant role in enhancing the
reliability and maintenance schedule of the machines.
Ball-bearing failures are the most probable failure
mode of the industrial rotating machinery.1,2
Therefore, many researchers have studied the
prognostic methods of the ball-bearings. The most
proposed methods are based on the analysis of the
vibration condition monitoring (VCM) data, since
that is the most effective condition monitoring (CM)
method of the rotating machinery.3
One of the main categories of the prognostic
approaches is known as data-driven methods. These
methods have been developed extensively in the last
two decades.4 Generally, data-driven methods are
categorized into the statistical methods and the artifi-
cial intelligence (AI) methods.5 The base of all the AI
methods includes two stages. In the first stage, some
run-to-failure datasets are used for training and
developing an AI model. Then, in the second stage
the trained model is employed for predicting the
remaining useful life (RUL) of the other similar com-
ponents by using the CM data history.6 There are
many several proposed features and algorithms that
have been introduced by the researchers for predicting
the RUL with the data-driven methods. Qiu et al.7
the ball-bearings. They used wavelet filter to extract
the features and the self-organized map to model the
degradation of ball-bearings. Gebraeel and Lawley8
used the neural network (NN) model for prognostics.
They used the vibration value in the defective
frequency and its six harmonics as input features of
the NN. Mahammad et al.9 used feed forward neural
network (FFNN) to estimate the RUL of the ball-
bearings. In that study, the Weibull hazard function
was applied for fitting to the features. However, the
proposed method by this group was tested on the
same data, which they had employed for training.
Tian10 introduced a generalized function of Weibull
hazard rate function, which shows better results of
fitting into the degradation data. He used actual
bearing CM measurement data for investigating his
proposed method. Zhu et al.11 combined neighbor-
hood rough set method and kernel method for
1
School of Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Iran
2
Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Abbaspour School
of Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
Corresponding author:
Mehdi Behzad, School of Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of
Technology, Azadi Avenue, Tehran 145888-969, Iran.
Email: m_behzad@sharif.edu
Behzad et al.
statistic feature extraction in bearing fault detection
problem. Chen et al.12 utilized their proposed relative
features for small sample rolling bearing prognostic
problem. Ben Ali et al.13 proposed a new technique
based on NN classification. Zhang et al.14 proposed a
new approach for feature selection in the faulty
bearing vibration signal. Van and Kang15 proposed
a two-stage selecting method for using more accurate
and rich degradation features.
In the PHM 2012 IEEE conference, a new dataset
of the bearing accelerated life test, named
PROGNOSTIA16 was published as a prognostic chal-
lenge for researchers. Then, many researchers applied
these datasets to their new studies in the recent years.
All the researches that will be reviewed by the end of
this paragraph have used the PROGNOSTIA dataset
in their work. Chouri et al.17 extracted eight features
in the time domain and two features in the frequency
domain. They utilized the supporting vector method
(SVM) for RUL prediction with the extracted fea-
tures. In another research, Benkedjouh et al.18 devel-
oped a model by combining the supporting vector
regression (SVR) and isometric feature mapping
reduction technique. They employed the energy of
the signal in eight different levels as the features. In
another research, the entropy of the vibration signal
was studied by Hong et al.19 They introduced a new
health indicator. Then, they could estimate the bear-
ing health condition and RUL based on the value of
the new proposed indicator. Liu et al.20 proposed a
data-driven framework based on the health state
assessment and then they used statistical features in
the time domain and the frequency domain for pre-
dicting the ball-bearing RUL. Zhao et al.21 proposed
another method based on time-frequency domain fea-
tures. Then, they used the linear regression model to
predict the RUL based on their new proposed feature
extraction technique.
In this study, considering the physical reason and
failure mechanism, a new feature has been introduced
for ball-bearing prognostic purpose. The FFNN
method has been employed for prediction. Finally,
the results of the applying new and the popular fea-
tures have been compared.
Feature selection
Feature selection is one of the most important steps in
all data-driven methods. An appropriate feature is
one that varies during the whole life of the bearing,
as well as it can describe the degradation of the bear-
ing. Therefore, it is better to choose a feature with the
monotonic behavior, since it is preferred for the RUL
estimation based on feature variation. So, it was the
aim of some researches to introduce the new features
and evaluating their performance in the prognostic
problem.
Various failure mechanisms may occur for rolling
element bearings in the service. All the probable
3225
failure mechanisms for these elements are discussed
and classified in ISO 15243.22 The rolling contact fati-
gue (RCF) is known as the main failure mechanism
that is highly probable to occur for the bearings,
which are working in the normal operating condition
with proper load, lubrication, installation, and free
from contamination. In this failure mechanism, the
subsurface microcracks initiate to propagate due to
repeating stress and fatigue in contacting surfaces.
When the cracks grow enough, some particles flake
from the surface and spalling happens in the surface
of the elements. Then, the spalling area is propa-
gated in the surface and the bearing degrades grad-
ually. When the spalling area reaches to a critical
value, this is the end of useful life for a bearing.
At this point, the level of the bearing vibration
during the operation is very high and the machine
needs to be stopped because of damage risk.
Sadeghi et al.23 had a good review on RCF failure
mechanism in bearings. They have discussed details
of this failure mechanism. In addition, they have
reviewed the different models that predict the bear-
ing life for RCF. Here, the degradation of the bear-
ing due to spall propagation is going to be studied
in this research.
Four main failure modes of the ball bearings are
corresponding to the inner race failure, the outer race
failure, the balls failure and the failure of the cage.
The degradation in the three first mentioned failure
modes starts with metal contacting surface defects.
Here, a physical mechanism of degradation is
explained for these three failure modes. When the
metal contacting surfaces of the bearing components
begin to be defected, the roughness of these surfaces
increases locally. This causes an increase in the vibra-
tion level of the bearing. Behzad et al.24 studied how
the surface defects increase the bearing vibration level.
They showed that the tiny peaks in the defected sur-
face cause more severe contacts between moving
parts. Consequently, the level of vibration in the
high-frequency bandwidth is enhanced gradually.
Therefore, the level of bearing vibration in the high-
frequency bandwidth is expected to be a good indica-
tor of its degradation in the earlier stages for failure
growth in the inner race, the outer race, and the balls.
In this regard, although there is no specific standard
reference, which discusses about using the high-fre-
quency vibrations in bearing fault detection, it is
used for bearing diagnostic purpose in many
researches and practical applications.
Based on the above discussion, the high-frequency
bandwidth root mean square (HFRMS) is chosen as a
frequency domain feature for ball-bearing RUL esti-
mation. Then the performance of this feature combin-
ing with that of other popular time domain features
will be investigated in this article. The results will be
compared with the performance of the popular fea-
tures in the literature including root mean square
(RMS) and kurtosis. In addition, selecting the
3226 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 232(18)

Figure 1. RMS and kurtosis trend for seven datasets in operating condition 1 of the PROGNOSTIA test.

frequency bandwidth will be based on considering the
ball-bearing resonance regions.
In order to improve the performance of the data--
driven model and make it more sensitive to the vari-
ation of the features, rather than the absolute values
of them, it is preferred to use the values of the features
in two different time steps ti and ti-d. The differ-
ence between two time steps, d, must be selected
based on the expected life of the bearing. Moreover,
the time in each step, ti, and the time in d steps before
that, ti-d, are considered as inputs for data-driven
model.
Behzad et al.
On the other hand, the life ratio, Tratio, is con-
sidered as the target of the data-driven model. It is
defined as the passed time from the start point of the
bearing until the current point i divided by whole
useful life, UL
ti
Tratioi ¼
UL
Figure 2. The structure of the proposed FFNN model.
Figure 3. Flowchart of the proposed data-driven method.
3227
Since the maximum value for the ti at the end of the
test is UL, Tratioi is expected to be a real number
between 0 and 1.
Experimental data
In this research, the experimental data of the
ð1Þ
PROGNOSTIA test16 are employed to investigate
the capability of the new proposed features. The
data of this test was published in PHM 2012
IEEE conference as a prognostic data challenge
and many researchers have used them for their
research during the recent years. The
PROGNOSTIA test includes the complete datasets
of 17 ball-bearing accelerated life run-to-failure
experiments in three different operating conditions.
In these experiments, the vibration of the bearing
has been monitored in the horizontal and the verti-
cal directions and the accelerometers have recorded
the vibration signals with 25.6 kHz sampling fre-
quency in each 10 s. The length of each recorded
signal is 0.1 s. For more details about the mentioned
experiments, please refer to Nectoux et al.16
In order to investigate the proposed method in this
article, operating condition 1 is selected. There were
two reasons for this choice: First, operating condi-
tions 1 and 2 include seven datasets. However, oper-
ating condition 3 includes just three datasets. Second,
the applied load in operating condition 1 is equal to
3228
Figure 4. A sample spectrum regarding to the bearing 5
(relative growth is observed in frequency bandwidths: [1,2]
kHz, [3,4] kHz, and [4.5,6.5] kHz).
the basic dynamic load rating of the bearing.
However, the bearing is overloaded in two other oper-
ating conditions (compared with basic dynamic load
of the bearing). Considering operating condition 1 for
investigating the proposed method, the initial analysis
was applied to these datasets in order to see the qual-
ity of tests and measurements. To this aim, the trend
of RMS and kurtosis of the seven datasets were inves-
tigated. Figure 1 shows the plot of the mentioned
trends.
On comparison of the initial analysis results
represented in Figure 1, it is seen that the kurtosis
in test 1-2 has unusual behavior. In addition, the
RMS trend pattern in test 1-4 does not match with
the known three-stage pattern of degradation
(including normal operation, slow degradation, and
fast degradation) that has been discussed in the
literature.19,25 Since these two datasets have no
normal expected behavior of bearing degradation,
they are preferred not to be used in this analysis and
verification. Therefore, these two datasets are
excluded from the applying data and the other five
datasets in operating condition 1 will be used for the
purpose of this study.
Artificial intelligence modeling
In this research, the FFNN method is employed for
RUL prediction of the ball-bearings. The proposed
algorithm is programmed in Matlab software.
Figure 2 shows the employed FFNN configuration.
This network includes two layers. In the first layer
(hidden layer), there are five neurons and a nonlinear
sigmoid function is selected for the output of this
layer. And, in the second layer the linear function is
used to produce the final output of the network. The
number of the neurons in the hidden layer are selected
by trial and error. In addition, the Levenberg–
Marquardt (LM) backpropagation algorithm is used
for training of the network. This FFNN has been very
Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 232(18)
efficient in modeling the nonlinear engineering
problems.
Here, various combinations of the popular time
domain features RMS and kurtosis, the new proposed
frequency domain feature HFRMS, and time are con-
sidered as the inputs of the NN. In order to decrease
the noise in the trend of features, the smoothing algo-
rithm is applied to all the three mentioned features. A
sliding window of length 5 is used to smoothen the
initial features. Therefore, each given feature in the ith
step, Vi, is replaced with the new smoothened value of
the feature, Vsi , that is the average value of the feature
in last five steps
1X 4
Vsi ¼ Vij ð2Þ
5 j¼0
After applying the smoothing algorithm to the fea-
ture trend, it is still possible to see some fluctuations in
some regions. The reason for these fluctuations is dis-
cussed in Ben Ali et al.13 However, degradation of the
ball-bearing and damage propagation is a monotonic
process, and the fluctuations of the features may dis-
turb the RUL estimation accuracy. To enhance the
accuracy of the NN method, it is preferred to fit a
degradation function to the actual data and then use
the fitted function in the training process. In this art-
icle, the generalized Weibull failure rate function10 is
used for fitting into the features. This function is con-
sidered with three unknown parameters A, B, and C
as follows
Vf ¼ A þ B tC ð3Þ
Parameter A is the value of the fitted function at
t ¼ 0. Parameter B is introduced to scale the function
and parameter C works as a shape parameter. So, this
function has a good flexibility to fit the degradation
data. In each training process, using the nonlinear
fitting method, this function is fitted to the smoothed
features. Then, the fitted values will be used as the
training data.
In the training process, 60% of the data points are
specified for training, 30% of the points are used for
validating, and remaining 10% of the points are used
for testing. Dividing the data points to these three
groups is based on random selection.
If the overfitting occurs in the NN during the train-
ing process, despite observing a good performance in
this step, the NN will not have acceptable perform-
ance in numerical tests with the new datasets. To pre-
vent the overfitting problem of the NN, the unfitted
smoothened features are used for validating, beside
the fitted values of the features that are used for
training.
In the next stage, the trained NN will be used for
prediction. In the prediction stage, the extracted fea-
tures from the initial vibration data must be
Behzad et al. 3229

Figure 5. Trend of new proposing features for all bearing tests.

3230 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 232(18)

Table 1. Comparison of the results of applying different features.

Numerical test code Applied features input Err2090 err2090

01 ti, ti-20, RMSi, RMSi-20, Ki, Ki-20 0.418 0.130

02 ti, ti-20, RMSi, RMSi-20 0.161 0.091
03 ti, ti-20, HFRMS(1,2)i, HFRMS(1,2)i-20 0.144 0.085
04 ti, ti-20, HFRMS(3,4)i, HFRMS(3,4)i-20 0.144 0.071
05 ti, ti-20, HFRMS(4.5,6.5)i, HFRMS(4.5,6.5)i-20 0.132 0.084
06 ti, ti-20, HFRMS(8,10)i, HFRMS(8,10)i-20 0.116 0.077
07 ti, ti-20, HFRMS(1,10)i, HFRMS(1,10)i-20 0.137 0.082
08 ti, ti-20, RMSi, RMSi-20, HFRMS(8,10)i, HFRMS(8,10)i-20 0.162 0.089
09 ti, ti-20, RMSi, RMSi-20, HFRMS(1,10)i, HFRMS(1,10)i-20 0.148 0.097
10 ti, ti-20, HFRMS(8,10)i, HFRMS(8,10)i-20, HFRMS(1,10)i, HFRMS(1,10)i-20 0.163 0.090

Table 2. Details of all numerical tests in calculating Err20-90.

Err2090 in each numerical test

Training Predicting
datasets datasets 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

1, 3, 5 6 0.7258 0.0589 0.0466 0.2978 0.1666 0.0797 0.0394 0.0710 0.0696 0.1094
7 0.1522 0.1340 0.1198 0.1411 0.1873 0.1215 0.1088 0.1457 0.1312 0.1225
1, 3, 6 5 0.1296 0.0473 0.0499 –0.0659 0.1153 0.0552 0.0653 –0.0795 0.0643 –0.0248
7 0.1997 0.1114 0.1255 0.1171 0.1755 0.1107 0.1303 0.1078 0.1303 0.1184
1, 3, 7 5 0.1144 0.0319 –0.0324 –0.1386 0.0859 0.0987 –0.0170 0.0857 0.0440 –0.0428
6 –0.5460 0.0558 0.0941 0.1834 0.0869 0.1067 0.0279 0.0894 0.0390 0.0846
1, 5, 6 3 –0.2989 0.2729 0.1414 0.2218 0.0834 0.1541 0.2844 0.2654 0.3472 0.1840
7 0.1672 0.1572 0.1531 –0.1004 0.1079 0.1882 0.1218 0.1993 0.1828 0.1615
1, 5, 7 3 –0.6079 0.2674 0.1995 0.2188 0.1500 0.1060 0.2680 0.2197 0.1321 0.3985
6 –0.7417 0.2461 0.1015 –0.2200 0.1342 0.0520 0.1607 0.1035 0.1271 0.3704
1, 6, 7 3 0.2820 0.3605 0.2184 0.1653 0.0518 0.0703 0.1888 0.4416 0.2062 0.1122
5 –0.0624 0.0651 –0.1492 0.0841 0.0973 –0.0200 0.1069 –0.1294 –0.0929 –0.0820
3, 5, 6 1 –0.2047 –0.1802 –0.1705 –0.1336 –0.1845 –0.1733 –0.1658 –0.1640 –0.1759 –0.1627
7 0.0944 0.0782 0.0888 0.1100 0.1057 0.0820 0.0858 0.0844 0.0817 0.0866
3, 5, 7 1 –1.9568 –0.2207 –0.2102 –0.2522 –0.2065 –0.1981 –0.1977 –0.1942 –0.2061 –0.2255
6 –0.8258 –0.0505 –0.0938 –0.1271 –0.0787 –0.0425 –0.0846 –0.0846 –0.0654 –0.0588
3, 6, 7 1 –0.3333 –0.1977 –0.2102 –0.0846 –0.2137 –0.2039 –0.2410 –0.2088 –0.2011 –0.2730
5 –0.1622 –0.0534 –0.0716 0.0487 –0.0724 –0.0505 –0.0955 –0.0397 –0.0573 –0.0907
5, 6, 7 1 –0.4371 –0.3502 –0.2339 –0.0692 –0.2619 –0.3141 –0.2548 –0.3441 –0.3734 –0.3570
3 0.3224 –0.2824 0.3608 0.0953 –0.0831 –0.0981 –0.0880 –0.1776 –0.2418 –0.1985
Average –0.2720 0.0275 0.0263 -0.0051 0.0223 0.0062 0.02218 0.0196 0.0071 0.0116
Average of magnitudes 0.4182 0.1611 0.1436 0.1437 0.1324 0.1162 0.1366 0.1618 0.1485 0.1632

smoothened with the same algorithm that was intro-
duced for the training data in equation (2). Then,
these data will be applied to the trained NN without
estimation with any fitting function. The output of the
network in any ith time step, ti, is the predicted time
ratio in that time step, T ratioi . Therefore, the estimated
remaining useful life RUL can be calculated as follows
ti
RUL ¼  ti

Tratioi
The discussed algorithm is summarized in a flow-
chart, which is shown in Figure 3.
Results
The results of applying the introduced features and
the proposed algorithm to the PROGNOSTIA test
datasets, and comparing them with applying popular
features is presented in this section. To achieve this
ð4Þ
purpose, several combination of the popular time
Behzad et al.
Figure 6. Comparison of the four selected features (training datasets: 1–5–7, prediction dataset: 3).
domain features and the new proposed frequency
domain features are considered for numerical tests.
The new proposed features are introduced with
HFRMS(a,b)i in this section, which means the RMS
of the spectrum signal in [a,b] kHz frequency band-
width at the ith time step. For selecting a frequency
bandwidth, the acceleration signal spectrum of all the
available datasets was studied. Relative amplitude
growth was detected in three regions. Therefore,
these three regions including [1,2] kHz, [3,4] kHz,
and [4.5,6.5] kHz were considered to be corresponding
to the bearing natural frequencies. These frequency
bandwidths are three candidates for new feature cal-
culation. Additionally, the high-frequency bandwidth
[8,10] kHz and the wide bandwidth [1,10] kHz are two
more candidates for this study. The [8,10] kHz
includes no considerable amplitude growth and the
[1,10] kHz covers all the previous mentioned regions.
As an example, a sample spectrum diagram for the
healthy condition of bearing 5 is presented in
Figure 4. The three mentioned frequency bandwidths
corresponding to the natural frequencies of the
3231
bearing and a flat region with no considerable peaks
are indicated in this sample spectrum.
To study the variation of the proposed features
during the whole life of the bearing, the trend of all
these features for five selected run-to-failure bearing
tests are depicted and compared together in Figure 5.
Generally, the introduced features show different
behaviors. The monotonic behavior is desired for a
feature that is going to be used as health indicator.
However, comparing the trends of the HFRMS fea-
tures in Figure 5 shows that in the actual cases, some
features may not obey the desired monotonic behav-
ior. In addition, it is feasible that in some cases, the
vibration level in high-frequency bandwidth may
locally decrease for a period of time, after the initial
increase. This local decrease is due to the smoothening
of the created sharp edges during the spalling of the
surface. The continuous metal-to-metal contacts
cause this smoothening. However, usually the bearing
vibration trend may regrow after a local decrease,
which is because of the spall propagation and degrad-
ation of the components. Therefore, although it is
3232 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 232(18)

Figure 7. Comparison of the four selected features (training datasets: 3–5–7, prediction dataset: 1).

probable to observe local decrease in the vibration datasets, the best one is recorded as the results of
level, usually the general behavior of the vibration that numerical test.
trend is increasing. This general behavior is seen in The parameter Err20-90 is introduced to investigate
all the plotted trends in Figure 5. and compare the numerical tests results. This
The list of the numerical tests and corresponding parameter is defined as the maximum error of
applied features as the inputs, are shown in column 1 predicted time ratio T i , between the 0.2 and 0.9 of
and column 2 of Table 1 respectively. As previously the bearing whole life.
mentioned, the two values of each feature, including
 
the current value and the value at d-steps before that, Ti  T i
are applied as the inputs to the NN. In these numer- Err2090 ¼ max ; 0:2 4 Ti 40:9 ð5Þ
Ti
ical tests, d is considered to be 20 steps, which corres-
ponds to 200 s. In the same way, the average value of error
Each numerical test includes all possible cases of between 0.2 and 0.9 of the whole life, err20-90, is intro-
selecting three datasets out of five available datasets duced as follows
for training and then applying the trained NN to the
Xn2   
other two remaining datasets. Therefore, in 1 Ti  T i Tn1 ¼ 0:2
each numerical test, 10 various NNs are trained and err2090 ¼ ;
n2  n1 þ 1 i¼n1 Ti Tn2 ¼ 0:9
each one is applied to two datasets. It means that each
numerical test includes 20 set of results. For each ð6Þ
numerical test, the whole mentioned procedure is
repeated five times, and after evaluating the perform- Err2090 and err2090 , which are shown in the third
ance of the five trained networks on the testing and fourth columns of Table 1, are the average of 20
Behzad et al.
magnitude values in each numerical test for param-
eters Err20-90 and err20-90, respectively.
Comparing the results of all the numerical tests
shows that generally it can be said that the high-fre-
quency features have had better prediction and less
error in comparison to the RMS feature and the com-
bination of RMS and kurtosis (numerical tests 01 and
02). In addition, since the analysis method includes
some randomness and uncertainty, it is not possible
to compare the numerical tests whose results are
closer to each other. However, bearing this in mind,
it is possible to roughly compare the numerical tests.
Moreover, the frequency bandwidth with no
resonance region (numerical test 06) shows the most
accurate prediction between all the high-frequency
features.
To see the more details of the numerical tests,
Table 2 represents the Err20-90 values for all the
cases of selecting training datasets and predicting
datasets.
Since the results of 200 predictions have been pre-
sented in Table 2, it is not possible to depict all the
prediction graphs. Therefore, at the end of this sec-
tion, the prediction graph for only two selected com-
binations for training and prediction datasets are
presented in Figures 6 and 7. Four features out of
ten tested features are considered for comparison in
these figures.
In Figure 6, datasets 1, 5, and 7 have been employed
for training and the trained network has been applied
to dataset 3 for prediction. Two sets of popular fea-
tures and two sets of new proposed features are
selected for comparison purpose. In Figure 7, datasets
3, 5, and 7 have been selected for training and dataset 1
was used for prediction purpose. The same features
were applied for comparison. The depicted figures
show better prediction of high-frequency bandwidth
features for the prognostic problem.
Conclusion
Using the high-frequency vibration level for RUL,
prediction of ball-bearings was studied in this article.
This study can be applied to defects generated by
fatigue and spall propagation. In this failure mechan-
ism, onset of the degradation of the ball-bearing
causes the increase in the number and severity of the
metal-to-metal impacts between component surfaces
during its operation. Therefore, it is expected to
observe the growth in high-frequency vibration level.
So, this indicator can show the ball-bearing health
condition and degradation level.
The features extracted from high-frequency vibra-
tion level were introduced and employed in the pro-
posed FFNN method for prognostics of ball bearing.
The method was evaluated by using the experimental
results of the bearing accelerated life tests.
Comparison of the performance of the new proposed
features with that of the popular features in the
3233
literature shows more accurate prediction of the pre-
sented approach in this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Funding
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