Wavelets for fault diagnosis of rotary machines: A review with applications

Over the last 20 years, particularly in last 10 years, great progress has been made in the theory and applications of wavelets and many publications have been seen in the field of fault diagnosis. This paper attempts to provide a review on recent applications of the wavelets with focus on rotary machine fault diagnosis. After brief introduction of the theoretical background on both classical wavelet transform and second generation wavelet transform, applications of wavelets in rotary machine fault diagnosis are summarized according to the following categories: continuous wavelet transform-based fault diagnosis, discrete wavelet transform-based fault diagnosis, wavelet packet transform-based fault diagnosis, and second generation wavelet transform-based fault diagnosis. In addition, some new research trends, including wavelet finite element method, dual-tree complex wavelet transform, wavelet function selection, new wavelet function design, and multi-wavelets that advance the development of wavelet-based fault diagnosis are also discussed.