A novel drum-shaped metastructure aided weak signal enhancement method for bearing fault diagnosis

Rolling bearings, extensively utilized in rotating machinery, have critical significance for online fault diagnosis in the domains of industrial equipment maintenance and accident prevention. Presently, fault diagnosis methods heavily rely on identifying the optimal resonance band in the high-frequency range (several kHz) to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) fault information. However, these approaches, which necessitate high sampling rate sensing systems and complex algorithm deployments, contradict the practical requirements for cost-effective sensors and edge computing in online diagnosis. To address this contradiction, this paper introduces a novel Drum-shaped Metastructure (DMS) to enhance weak bearing fault signals, thus promoting the detection performance of conventional sensors. The DMS is constructed with a drumhead metastructure consisting of a central block mass attached with four spiral beams, of which its length can be adjusted by a tunable frequency mechanism (TFM) for different frequency responses of interest. The detail of its selective frequency enhancement characteristics is first studied through numerical simulations within a frequency range of 200 Hz to 1000 Hz. Subsequently, the effectiveness of the weak signal enhancement is verified on various bearing test systems, which utilize a prototype DMS fabricated by 3D printing. The results present a significant enhancement in the SNRs of the bearing fault signal, which is achieved by demodulating the full frequency band without the need for complex algorithms. Therefore, the proposed DMS provides a new cost-efficient approach to weak bearing fault diagnosis and online monitoring.