An adaptive Morlet wavelet-based iterative filtering method for locating informative frequency band

Locating the informative frequency band of rolling bearing fault signals is of great significance for feature extraction and fault diagnosis. Benefiting from the adjustable center frequency and bandwidth as well as the similarity to impulse-like characteristics induced by bearing failures, Morlet wavelets are commonly used in resonance demodulation. However, fault impulses are highly susceptible to contamination by strong noise, which impedes the efficacy of existing wavelet parameter selection strategies and frequency band optimization methods. In this paper, an adaptive Morlet wavelet-based iterative filtering (AMIF) method is proposed for frequency band optimization under strong noise. The resonance frequency band is pinpointed based on adaptive Morlet wavelet filter banks, with off-band noise being canceled and fault features being refined during the level-by-level filtering process. Additional iterative operations are leveraged to enhance fault features of in-band signals to facilitate the optimization of the filtering parameters. Effectiveness of the proposed AMIF method and its superiority over the wavelet packet transform-based kurtogram and minimum entropy deconvolution are verified through simulation and experimental analysis. The results demonstrate that AMIF can accurately localize the informative frequency band, thereby extracting high-quality fault features, making it suitable for bearing fault diagnosis under strong noise condition with different fault types.