Abstract
This paper deals with a bearing faults localization technique based on holographic approach by visualizing sound radiated from the faults. The main idea stems from the phenomenon that bearing faults in a moving vehicle generate impulsive sound. To visualize fault signal from the moving vehicle, we can use the moving frame acoustic holography [Kwon, H.-S. and Kim, Y.-H., 1998, "Moving Frame Technique for Planar Acoustic Holography," J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Vol. 103, No. 4, pp. 1734${\sim}$1741]. However, it is not easy to localize faults only by applying the method. This is because the microphone array measures noise(for example, noise from other parts of the vehicle and the wind noise) as well as the fault signal while the vehicle passes by the array. To reduce the effect of noise, we propose two ideas which utilize the characteristics of fault signal. The first one is to average holograms for several frequencies to reduce the random noise. The second one is to apply the partial field decomposition algorithm [Nam, K.-U., Kim, Y.-H., 2004, "A Partial Field Decomposition Algorithm and Its Examples for Near-field Acoustic Holography," J. of Acoust. Soc. Am. Vol. 116, No. 1, pp. 172${\sim}$185] to the moving source, which can separate the fault signal and noise. Basic theory of those methods is introduced and how they can be applied to localize bearing faults is demonstrated. Experimental results via a miniature vehicle showed how well the proposed method finds out the location of source in practice.
