The Rational Spline Interpolation Based-LOD Method and Its Application to Rotating Machinery Fault Diagnosis

Local oscillatory-characteristic decomposition (LOD) is a relatively new self-adaptive time-frequency analysis methodology. The method, based on local oscillatory characteristics of the signal itself uses three mathematical operations such as differential, coordinate domain transform, and piecewise linear transform to decompose the multi-component signal into a series of mono-oscillation components (MOCs), which is very suitable for processing multi-component signals. However, in the LOD method, the computational efficiency and real-time processing performance of the algorithm can be significantly improved by the use of piecewise linear transformation, but the MOC component lacks smoothness, resulting in distortion. In order to overcome the disadvantages mentioned above, the rational spline function that spline shape can be adjusted and controlled is introduced into the LOD method instead of the piecewise linear transformation, and the rational spline-local oscillatory-characteristic decomposition (RS-LOD) method is proposed in this paper. Based on the detailed illustration of the principle of RS-LOD method, the RS-LOD, LOD, and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) are compared and analyzed by simulation signals. The results show that the RS-LOD method can significantly improve the problem of poor smoothness of the MOC component in the original LOD method. Moreover, the RS-LOD method is applied to the fault feature extraction of rotating machinery for the multi-component modulation characteristics of rotating machinery fault vibration signals. The analysis results of the rolling bearing and fan gearbox fault vibration signals show that the RS-LOD method can effectively extract the fault feature of the rotating mechanical vibration signals.