An Enhanced Version of Second-Order Synchrosqueezing Transform Combined with Time-Frequency Image Texture Features to Detect Faults in Bearings

Signals with multiple components and fast-varying instantaneous frequencies reduce the readability of the time-frequency representations obtained by traditional synchrosqueezing transforms due to time-frequency blurring. We discussed a vertical synchrosqueezing transform, which is a second-order synchrosqueezing transform based on the short-time Fourier transform and compared it to the traditional short-time Fourier transform, synchrosqueezing transform, and another form of the second-order synchrosqueezing transform, the oblique synchrosqueezing transform. The quality of the time-frequency representation and the accuracy of mode reconstruction were compared through simulations and experiments. Results reveal that the second-order frequency estimator of the vertical synchrosqueezing transform could obtain accurate estimates of the instantaneous frequency and achieve highly energy-concentrated time-frequency representations for multicomponent and fast-varying signals. We also explored the application of statistical feature parameters of time-frequency image textures for the early fault diagnosis of roller bearings under fast-varying working conditions, both with and without noise. Experiments showed that there was no direct positive correlation between the resolution of the time-frequency images and the accuracy of fault diagnosis. However, the early fault diagnosis of roller bearings based on statistical texture features of high-resolution images obtained by the vertical synchrosqueezing transform was shown to have high accuracy and strong robustness to noise, thus meeting the demand for intelligent fault diagnosis.