An Analysis of the WPT Function for Pattern Optimization to Detect Defects in Bearings

New trends in maintenance techniques are oriented to digitization and prognosis. The new electronic devices based on IoT (Internet of Things) technology among others that support the industry 4.0 paradigm let enhance the traditional condition monitoring techniques to better understand and predict the state of a machine in service. Related to maintenance applications, one of the important steps in condition monitoring tasks for fault diagnosis is the selection of the optimal pattern to provide accurate results (avoiding fault positives/negatives) with adequate computation time. When implementing this, the selection of optimal parameters and thresholds for setting alarms are important to detect problems in the machine before the failure occurs. Vibratory signals have been proved to be a good variable to determine their mechanical behavior. Nevertheless, parameters obtained from time domain measurements are not computationally efficient nor good patterns to compare different machine conditions. In this sense, tools that represent the frequency domain or time–frequency domain have been useful to detect defects in rotating elements such as bearings. In this work, defects in ball bearings are studied using wavelet packet transform. For this, a methodology will be developed for the optimal selection of the mother wavelet, incorporating intelligent classification systems, and using a medium Gaussian support vector machine model. In this way, it will be verified that the correct selection of this function influences both the results and the ease and reliability of detection. The results using the selected mother wavelet will be compared to those using Daubechies 6, since it is the mother wavelet that has been used in previous works and which was selected based on experience. For it, vibratory signals are obtained from a testbench with different bearing conditions: healthy bearings and defective bearings (inner and outer race).