Diagnosis of angular contact ball bearing defects based on recurrence diagrams and quantification analysis of vibration signals

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of recurrence method for detecting defects in angular contact ball bearings. For this purpose, a defect-free bearing was tested and recurrence reference values were determined. Next, defects of different sizes were introduced into each component of the bearing: the outer ring, the inner ring, and the ball. Finally, recurrence quantifications were calculated for the bearings with defects and compared with their reference values. Obtained results demonstrated that the recurrence approach was extremely promising and could detect defects in a very short time series (0.04s). Moreover, it was shown that among the different recurrence indicators, closely related to defect formation, determinism and laminarity were the most promising ones for detecting defects in all bearing components.