Python For Engineering and Scientific Computing

6.10    Project Task: Simulation of a Rolling Bearing Damage

Every machine tool generates mechanical vibrations during operation, generally caused by the rotary movements of its shafts. These vibrations can be captured by a microphone, converted to digital signals by an analog-to-digital converter, and displayed on a laptop screen using special software. These oscillations are accelerations that become visible on the screen as non-specific signals, which we call “noise” due to the large number of bearings and the complexity of the movements.

However, bearing damage generates additional machine noise that cannot be detected in the frequency mixing of the time signal. This scenario is exactly where the Fourier transform finds an important application. ...