Adaptive feature mode decomposition method for bearing fault diagnosis under strong noise

In practical mechanical equipment operation, bearing vibration signals are challenging to analyze due to their non-stationarity and low signal-to-noise ratio for traditional detection methods. As a new signal decomposition method, the feature mode decomposition (FMD) method has been successfully applied to bearing fault diagnostics. However, FMD’s decomposition efficiency is easily influenced by the input parameter settings, and the efficiency of the decomposed signals is related to the number of initialized filter banks. For this reason, this paper proposes an adaptive parameterized feature mode decomposition method. Firstly, based bearing fault diagnosis method using a cuckoo search algorithm with logarithmic decline of nonlinear inertial weights and random adjustment discovery probability (DWCS), which is used to optimize the three parameters of the FMD. Then, a new approach to finding out the maximum feature fault frequency and its multiplicative feature frequency is proposed, called the feature frequency ratio (FFR), obtained from the envelope spectrum of bearing fault signal. Finally, this paper uses the DWCS based on the maximum FFR to adaptively select the best FMD parameter combination, which is verified by simulation, the results of the proposed AFMD can effectively extract bearing fault features under strong background noise with a signal-to-noise ratio of −15 dB, and actual experiments further verify the superiority of the method, which not only improves the accuracy of fault diagnosis under strong background noise, but also contributes to the overall maintenance and operational efficiency of the mechanical system.