Experimental determination of the rubbing location by means of acoustic emission and wavelet transform

A method to pinpoint the rubbing location in a rotor-bearing system is pres ented. This method is based on the data sampled by acoustic emission (AE) s ensors placed at different bearing supports. Usually, the point where rubbi ng occurs cannot be detected using the method of cross-correlation directly to the data, due to the noise produced during rubbing and the structure re sonance of the signal. Through wavelet transform (WT), signals are decompos ed into a series of time-domain signals, each of which covers a specific oc tave frequency band. Then the method of cross-correlation is applied to the decomposed signals to detect the rubbing location. This method is found to be very effective. (C) 2001 Academic Press.