An Enhancement Deep Feature Extraction Method for Bearing Fault Diagnosis Based on Kernel Function and Autoencoder

Rotating machinery vibration signals are nonstationary and nonlinear under complicated operating conditions. It is meaningful to extract optimal features from raw signal and provide accurate fault diagnosis results. In order to resolve the nonlinear problem, an enhancement deep feature extraction method based on Gaussian radial basis kernel function and autoencoder (AE) is proposed. Firstly, kernel function is employed to enhance the feature learning capability, and a new AE is designed termed kernel AE (KAE). Subsequently, a deep neural network is constructed with one KAE and multiple AEs to extract inherent features layer by layer. Finally, softmax is adopted as the classifier to accurately identify different bearing faults, and error backpropagation algorithm is used to fine-tune the model parameters. Aircraft engine intershaft bearing vibration data are used to verify the method. The results confirm that the proposed method has a better feature extraction capability, requires fewer iterations, and has a higher accuracy than standard methods using a stacked AE.