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Application of the EEMD method to rotor

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ARTICLE in MECHANICAL SYSTEMS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING MAY 2009
Impact Factor: 2.26 DOI: 10.1016/j.ymssp.2008.11.005

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ARTICLE IN PRESS
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 23 (2009) 13271338

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jnlabr/ymssp

Application of the EEMD method to rotor fault diagnosis

of rotating machinery
Yaguo Lei , Zhengjia He, Yanyang Zi
State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems Engineering, Xian Jiaotong University, Xianning West Road # 28, Xian 710049, PR China

a r t i c l e in fo

abstract

Article history:
Received 22 September 2008
Received in revised form
30 October 2008
Accepted 2 November 2008
Available online 24 November 2008

Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is a self-adaptive analysis method for nonlinear

and non-stationary signals. It may decompose a complicated signal into a collection of
intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) based on the local characteristic time scale of the signal.
The EMD method has attracted considerable attention and been widely applied to fault
diagnosis of rotating machinery recently. However, it cannot reveal the signal
characteristic information accurately because of the problem of mode mixing. To
alleviate the mode mixing problem occurring in EMD, ensemble empirical mode
decomposition (EEMD) is presented. With EEMD, the components with truly physical
meaning can be extracted from the signal. Utilizing the advantage of EEMD, this paper
proposes a new EEMD-based method for fault diagnosis of rotating machinery. First, a
simulation signal is used to test the performance of the method based on EEMD. Then,
the proposed method is applied to rub-impact fault diagnosis of a power generator and
early rub-impact fault diagnosis of a heavy oil catalytic cracking machine set. Finally, by
comparing its application results with those of the EMD method, the superiority of the
proposed method based on EEMD is demonstrated in extracting fault characteristic
information of rotating machinery.
& 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Ensemble empirical mode decomposition
Empirical mode decomposition
Intrinsic mode function
Rotating machinery
Fault diagnosis

1. Introduction
Rotating machinery covers a broad range of mechanical equipment and plays an important role in industrial
applications. With rapid development of science and technology, rotating machinery in modern industry is growing larger,
more precise and more automatic. Its potential faults become more difcult to nd. Therefore, the need to increase
reliability against possible failures has attracted considerable interests in fault diagnosis of rotating machinery in recent
years. Because vibration signals carry a great deal of information representing mechanical equipment condition, the
vibration-based signal processing technique is one of the principal tools for diagnosing faults of rotating machinery [1,2].
With the signal processing techniques, fault characteristic information can be extracted from the vibration signals.
However, it is a challenge to develop and adopt effective signal processing techniques that can extract key fault information
from the vibration signals [3].
Conventional signal processing techniques include time-domain statistical analysis and Fourier transform, which have
proved to be effective in fault diagnosis of rotating machinery. However, these techniques are based on the assumption that
the process generating signals is stationary and linear. They usually result in false information when they are applied to the
mechanical fault signals, because the mechanical faults by nature are non-stationary and transient events [4]. To deal with
 Corresponding author.

E-mail address: leiyaguo@gmail.com (Y. Lei).

0888-3270/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ymssp.2008.11.005

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non-stationary signals, timefrequency analysis, such as wavelet transform, has been applied to fault diagnosis of rotating
machinery and attracted more and more attention during the past decade. However, the wavelet transform being nonadaptive has the shortcoming that its analysis results depend on the choice of the wavelet base function. This may lead to a
subjective and a priori assumption on the characteristics of the investigated vibration signal. As a result, only the signal
characteristics that correlate well with the shape of the wavelet base function have a chance to produce high-value
coefcients. Any other characteristics will be masked or completely ignored.
Empirical mode decomposition (EMD), as a new timefrequency analysis technique, has been developed and widely
applied in fault diagnosis of rotating machinery recently, for example, gear fault diagnosis [4,6,7], rolling bearing fault
diagnosis [810] and rotor fault diagnosis [1113]. EMD is based on the local characteristic time scales of a signal and could
decompose the complicated signal into a set of complete and almost orthogonal components named intrinsic mode
function (IMF) [5]. The IMFs represent the natural oscillatory mode embedded in the signal and work as the basis functions,
which are determined by the signal itself, rather than pre-determined kernels. Thus, it is a self-adaptive signal processing
method that can be applied to nonlinear and non-stationary process perfectly. However, one of the major drawbacks of
EMD is the mode mixing problem, which is dened as either a single IMF consisting of components of widely disparate
scales, or a component of a similar scale residing in different IMFs.
To alleviate the problem of mode mixing in EMD, ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), an improved
method of EMD, is presented by Wu and Huang [14] recently. EEMD is a noise-assisted data analysis method and by adding
nite white noise to the investigated signal, the EEMD method can eliminate the mode mixing problem in all cases
automatically. Therefore, the EEMD represents a major improvement of EMD.
In this paper, a fault diagnosis method based on EEMD is proposed to increase the precision of EMD in fault diagnosis of
rotating machinery. The proposed method is applied to rub-impact fault diagnosis of a power generator and a heavy oil
catalytic cracking machine set. And the characteristics of rub-impact faults are successfully detected with it. Comparing the
application results of the proposed method with those of EMD, it is shown that the proposed method based on EEMD
obtains a more precise diagnosis result.

2. Empirical mode decomposition

2.1. EMD algorithm
The EMD method is able to decompose a signal into some IMFs. An IMF is the function that satises the two following
conditions: (1) in the whole data set, the number of extrema and the number of zero-crossings must either equal or differ
at most by one, and (2) at any point, the mean value of the envelope dened by local maxima and the envelope dened by
the local minima is zero [5]. An IMF represents simple oscillatory mode embedded in the signal. With the simple
assumption that any signal consists of different simple IMFs, the EMD method was developed to decompose a signal into
IMF components. The EMD process of a signal x(t) can be described as follows:

(1) Initialize: r0 x(t), and i 1.

(2) Extract the ith IMF.
(a) Initialize: hi(k1) ri, k 1.
(b) Extract the local maxima and minima of hi(k1).
(c) Interpolate the local maxima and the minima by cubic spline lines to form upper and lower envelops of hi(k1).
(d) Calculate the mean mi(k1) of the upper and lower envelops of hi(k1).
(e) Let hik hi(k1)mi(k1).
(f) If hik is a IMF then set IMFi hik, else go to step (b) with k k+1.
(3) Dene ri+1 riIMFi.
(4) If ri+1 still has least 2 extrema then go to step (2) else decomposition process is nished and ri+1 is the residue of the
signal.

At the end of the procedure we have a residue rI and a collection of I IMFs ci (i 1,2, y, I). Summing up all IMFs and the
nal residue rI, we obtain
xt

I
X

ci r I

(1)

i1

Thus, we can achieve a decomposition of the signal into I IMFs and a residue rI, which is the mean trend of x(t). The IMFs
c1,c2, y, cI include different frequency bands ranging from high to low. The frequency components contained in each
frequency band are different and they change with the variation of signal x(t), while rI represents the central tendency of
signal x(t). A more detailed explanation of EMD can be found in Ref. [5].

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2.2. Mode mixing

One shortcoming of the EMD method is the appearance of mode mixing. Mode mixing is dened as a single IMF
including oscillations of dramatically disparate scales, or a component of a similar scale residing in different IMFs. It is a
result of signal intermittency. As discussed by Huang et al. [5], the intermittence could not only cause serious aliasing in the
timefrequency distribution, but also make physical meaning of individual IMF unclear. When the mode mixing problem
occurs, an IMF can cease to have physical meaning by itself, suggesting falsely that there may be different physical
processes represented in a mode.
To illustrate the mode mixing problem in EMD, a simulation signal x(t) is considered in this section. The simulation
signal, shown in Fig. 1(a), is a sine wave of 36 Hz attached by small impulses. Thus, it is a combined signal and involves two
components. Performing EMD on the signal, the decomposed two IMFs are shown in Fig. 1(b) and (c).
It is obvious that the two IMFs obtained by EMD are distorted seriously. Mode mixing is occurring between IMFs c1 and
c2. The sine wave and the impulses are decomposed into the same IMF (c1). Moreover, the sine wave is decomposed into the
two IMFs. Thus, both IMFs c1 and c2 of EMD fail to represent the characteristics of signal x(t) accurately. This is a typical
problem of mode mixing.
3. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition
To overcome the problem of mode mixing in EMD, a new noise-assisted data analysis method is proposed. It is EEMD,
which denes the true IMF components as the mean of an ensemble of trials. Each trial consists of the decomposition
results of the signal plus a white noise of nite amplitude [14]. This new method is based on the insight from recent studies
of the statistical properties of white noise [15,16], which showed that the EMD method is an effective self-adaptive dyadic
lter bank when applied to the white noise. Additionally, the result studied by Flandrin et al. [17] demonstrated that noise
could help data analysis in the EMD method. All these investigation promotes the advent of the EEMD method.
3.1. EEMD algorithm
The principle of the EEMD algorithm is the following: the added white noise would populate the whole timefrequency
space uniformly with the constituting components of different scales. When a signal is added to this uniformly distributed
white noise background, the components in different scales of the signal are automatically projected onto proper scales of
reference established by the white noise in the background. Because each of the noise-added decompositions consists of
the signal and the added white noise, each individual trial may certainly produce very noisy results. But the noise in each
trial is different in separate trials. Thus it can be decreased or even completely canceled out in the ensemble mean of
enough trails. The ensemble mean is treated as the true answer because nally, the only persistent part is the signal as
more and more trials are added in the ensemble. The EEMD principle advanced here is based on the following observations
[14]:
(1) A collection of white noise cancels each other out in an ensemble mean; therefore, only the signal can survive and
persist in the nal noise-added signal ensemble mean.

1
0
-1

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

0.12

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

0.12

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

0.12

1
0
-1

1
0
-1

Fig. 1. The decomposition result with EMD: (a) the simulation signal, (b) IMF c1, and (c) IMF c2.

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(2) White noise is necessary to force the ensemble to nd all possible solutions; the white noise makes the different scale
signals reside in the corresponding IMFs, and render the resulting ensemble mean more meaningful.
(3) The decomposition with truly physical meaning of EMD is not the one without noise; it is designated to be the
ensemble mean of a large number of trials consisting of the noise-added signal.

Based on the principle and observations above, the EEMD algorithm can be given as follows.
(1) Initialize the number of ensemble M, the amplitude of the added white noise, and m 1.
(2) Perform the mth trial on the signal added white noise.
(a) Add a white noise series with the given amplitude to the investigated signal
xm t xt nm t

(2)

where nm(t) indicates the mth added white noise series, and xm(t) represents the noise-added signal of the mth
trial.
(b) Decompose the noise-added signal xm(t)into I IMFs ci,m(i 1,2, y, I) using the EMD method described in Section 2.1,
where ci,m denotes the ith IMF of the mth trial, and I is the number of IMFs.
(c) If moM then go to step (a) with m m+1. Repeat steps (a) and (b) again and again, but with different white noise
series each time.
(3) Calculate the ensemble mean c i of the M trials for each IMF
ci 1M

M
X

ci;m ; i 1; 2; . . . ; I; m 1; 2; . . . ; M

(3)

m1

(4) Report the mean c i (i 1,2, y, I) of each of the I IMFs as the nal IMFs.
To demonstrate the EEMD performance of overcoming the mode mixing problem, the simulation signal in Fig. 1(a) is
decomposed again using EEMD with the ensemble number 100 and the added noise amplitude 0.01 time standard
deviation of the signal. The decomposition result is shown in Fig. 2. From Fig. 2(b) and (c), it is seen that the two
components contained in the signal are decomposed into two IMFs perfectly. IMF c1 denotes the impulse components and
IMF c2 indicates the sine wave. Thus, the EEMD method is able to solve the problem of mode mixing and achieve an
improved decomposition with physical meaning.

3.2. Parameter setting in EEMD

The previous section has introduced the EEMD algorithm and its capability of extracting components with physical
meaning from the signal. However, the number of ensemble and the amplitude of the added white noise are two
parameters needed to be set when the EEMD method is used. The following two sections will discuss the choice of these
two parameters.

1
0
-1

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

0.12

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

0.12

0.02

0.04

0.06

0.08

0.1

0.12

0.5
0
-0.5
0.5
0
-0.5

Fig. 2. The decomposition result with EEMD: (a) the simulation signal, (b) IMF c1, and (c) IMF c2.

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3.2.1. The number of ensemble

The relationship among the ensemble number, the amplitude of the added white noise and the effect of the added noise
is given in the following equation [14].
a
e p
N

(4)

or
ln e

a
ln N 0
2

(5)

where N is the number of ensemble, a is the amplitude of the added white noise, and e is the standard deviation of error,
which is dened as the difference between the input signal and the corresponding IMFs.
When the EEMD procedure is performed, the added white noise with small amplitude may lead to a small error. But, if
the added noise amplitude is too small, then it may not cause the change of extrema that the EEMD method relies on. This
is true when the investigated signal has a large gradient. Therefore, in order to make EEMD effective, the amplitude of the
added noise should not be too small. However, by increasing the number of ensemble, the error caused by the added white
noise could always be reduced to a quite small even negligible level. Generally, an ensemble number of a few hundred will
lead to an exact result, and the remaining noise would cause less than a fraction of one percent of error if the added noise
has the amplitude that is a fraction of the standard deviation of the investigated signal [14].
3.2.2. The amplitude of the added white noise
The investigation in reference [14] indicated that EMD is a noise-friendly method. And increasing noise amplitudes and
ensemble numbers changes the decomposition results little as long as the added noise has moderate amplitude and the
ensemble has a large enough number.
It is noticed that when the amplitude of noise increases, the number of ensemble should increase to reduce the
contribution of the added noise in the decomposed results. It is suggested that the amplitude of the added white noise is
about 0.2 time standard deviation of the investigated signal [14]. But it is not always the proper amplitude of the added
noise for any cases. Generally, when the signal is dominated by high-frequency components, the noise amplitude needs to
be smaller. And when the signal is dominated by low-frequency components, the noise amplitude should be increased.
However, there is no a specic equation reported in the literature to guide the choice of the noise amplitude until now.
Thus, for an investigated signal, different noise levels should be tried to select the appropriate one.
4. Simulation experiment
In fault diagnosis of rotating machinery, modulation and impact are two typical fault events. Therefore, the proposed
method based on EEMD is tested on a simulation signal including modulation and impact components. The simulation
signal also consists of a sine wave representing a certain rotating frequency of machinery and a trend item. Thus, there are
altogether four components corresponding to different physical meaning in the simulation signal. The four components
and the simulation signal combined by them are shown in Fig. 3(a)(e), respectively.
Applying the EEMD method to the decomposition of the simulation signal, the decomposition result is given in Fig. 4. It
can be seen from Fig. 4 that components c1, c2, c3 and c4 respectively correspond to the impact component, a certain
rotating frequency, modulation component and trend item. Comparing the decomposed components shown in Fig. 4 with
the real components given in Fig. 3, it is found that the different components embedded in the signal can be extracted
accurately using the EEMD method.
For comparison, the simulation signal is analyzed again using the EMD method and the decomposition result is
displayed in Fig. 5. It is clear that the problem of mode mixing appears between different IMFs and there are serious
distortions for each IMF. This result shows that the EMD method fails to provide the reasonable decomposition.
Additionally, observing the errors of EEMD and EMD shown in Fig. 6, which are obtained through calculating the absolute
values of the differences between the decomposition components and the corresponding real components as shown in Fig.
3, the errors of EEMD are far smaller than those of EMD. Thus, the decomposition result of the EEMD method is better than
that of the EMD method.
5. Applications to the fault diagnosis of rotating machinery
5.1. Rub-impact fault diagnosis of a power generator
A power generator is important equipment in energy supply. It is signicant to diagnose the faults occurring in the
power generator for guaranteeing the regular energy supply, avoiding the economic loss and saving the production cost.
Fig. 7 displays a structure sketch of a power generator in a thermal-electric plant in China. This machine set consists of a
high-pressure cylinder, a low-pressure cylinder, a motor and an exciter.

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2
0
-2
2
0
-2
2
0
-2
10
5
0
10
5
0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Fig. 3. The four components and the simulation signal: (a)(d) the four components, (e) the simulation signal.

2
c1

0
-2
2

c2

0
-2
2

c3

0
-2

c4

10
5
0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Fig. 4. The decomposed four components with EEMD.

A certain day, it was found that the high-pressure cylinder vibrated so intensely that the vibration virtual value
exceeded the safety threshold, and then the online monitoring system began to sound the alarm. One month later, the
machine vibrated even more violently. When the power generator was stopped to be maintained, it was found that one of
the bearing bushes of the machine set had been broken. In order to identify the fault pattern, the vibration signal was
collected by a vibration velocity transducer xed on the high-pressure cylinder, which is shown in Fig. 8. The signal length
is 1024, and the sampling frequency is 2000 Hz. The rotating frequency of the machine set is 50.78 Hz.
First, the EMD method is used to analyze the vibration signal, and the decomposed rst six IMFs are given in Fig. 9. It
could be seen that some local components of IMFs c1 and c2 are a series of impulses. Thus, we infer that periodic impacts
occur in the high-pressure cylinder. However, what is the reason that caused the impacts between the rotor and the bearing
bushes?
It is very difcult to answer this question from the information provided by the IMFs of EMD. Because there is a serious
mode mixing occurring between different IMFs, the more fault information can not be found to clarify the fault cause.
To solve the above difculty, the proposed diagnosis method based on EEMD is applied to the signal decomposition.
Using the proposed method with the ensemble number of 100 and the white noise amplitude of 0.3 time standard
deviation of that of the vibration signal, the decomposed IMFs are given in Fig. 10. IMF c1 is the added white noise. IMFs c2
and c3 indicate impulse components. IMF c4 is the rotating frequency component of the machine set and equals 50.78 Hz.
IMF c5 represents a component of 25.39 Hz, which is the half rotating frequency of the machine set.
It can be concluded that the fault pattern is not oil whirl in this machine set because oil whirl usually manifests itself by
frequencies ranging from 42% to 48% of the rotating frequency of the rotor. In a rotor system, both looseness and rub behave

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2
c1

0
-2
2

c2

0
-2
2

c3

0
-2

c4

10
5
0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Fig. 5. The decomposed four components with EMD.

2
0
2
0
2
0
2
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

EEMD

0.5

EMD

Fig. 6. The decomposition errors of EEMD and EMD.

High pressure
cylinder
#1

#2

Low pressure
cylinder
#3

Exciter

Motor

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

Amplitude (mms-1)

Fig. 7. The structure sketch of the power generator.

20
0
-20
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

Time (s)
Fig. 8. The vibration signal collected from the high-pressure cylinder.

0.5

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c2
c3
c4
c5
c6

10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10

c1

Y. Lei et al. / Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 23 (2009) 13271338

Amplitude (mms-1)

1334

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Time (s)

c1
c2
c3
c4
c5

10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10
10
0
-10

r5

Amplitude (mms-1)

Fig. 9. The decomposed result of the vibration signal of the high-pressure cylinder with EMD.

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Time (s)
Fig. 10. The decomposed result of the vibration signal of the high-pressure cylinder with EEMD.

themselves by the half rotating frequency. Because there are impacts between the rotor and the bearing bushes, we
consider that the fault of the power generator is the rub-impact pattern. That implies the rotor system of the high-pressure
cylinder rub and at the same time impact the bearing bushes when the power generator is operating. Then impulse
components are generated. Finally, the intense impacts broke one of the bearing bushes.

5.2. Early rub-impact fault diagnosis of a heavy oil catalytic cracking machine set
In this section, the proposed method based on EEMD is applied to an early rub-impact fault diagnosis of a machine set
named heavy oil catalytic cracking unit in an oil renery. This machine set consists of a gas turbo, a compressor, a gearbox
and a driving motor. The structure sketch of the machine set is shown in Fig. 11. The gas turbo is used to transform heat
energy to mechanics energy. Two bearing cases (bushes #1 and #2) are used to support the gas turbo shaft, another two
(bushes #3 and #4) are used to support the compressor shaft and bush #5 is to support the gearbox shaft. The hub and the
laminas (left components of the gas turbo) on the shaft are a cantilever structure. The rotating speed of the machine set is
5859 rpm (97.65 Hz). The instrument of a Bently 3300 system was equipped to monitor its operating condition. Eddy
current transducers are mounted on each bearing case in vertical and horizontal directions respectively to capture
vibration signals. A computer online monitoring system is available for data acquisition and record.
It was found that the vibration on bush #5 was over the safety threshold and greater than the other monitoring points
when the machine set was running. To investigate the reason, a vibration signal of bush #5 with the length of 1024 and the

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Gas turbo

Compressor

#1

#2

Gearbox

#3

#4

1335

Motor

#5

Amplitude (um)

Fig. 11. The structure sketch of the heavy oil catalytic cracking machine set.

40
20
0
-20
-40
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Time (s)
Fig. 12. The vibration signal of bush #5.

c1
0.031 s
c2

40
20
0
-20
-40
10
0

c3

Amplitude (um)

20
0
-20

-10
10
0.0395 s

-10

c4

0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Time (s)
Fig. 13. The decomposed result of the vibration signal of bush #5 with EEMD.

sampling frequency of 2000 Hz is analyzed, which is displayed in Fig. 12. The proposed method based on EEMD is used to
analyze this vibration signal.
The decomposed rst four IMFs, which cover the most characteristic information, are presented in Fig. 13. There are a
series of impulses in IMF c1 and the interval between the two adjacent impulses is roughly close to 31 ms, which
approximately equals three times revolution period (1/97.65 10.24 ms) of the machine set. The rotating frequency of the
machine set is represented by IMF c2. The impulse in IMF c1 occurs every three revolution cycles in IMF c2, which means the
impulse frequency is equal to 1/3 of the rotating frequency of the machine set. IMFs c3 and c4 are mostly dominated by a
component with a period of about 39.5 ms, which implies that the frequency of the components included in IMFs c3 and c4
is 25.32 Hz.
The frequency spectrum of the vibration signal is also performed and shown in Fig. 14. In the frequency spectrum, there
are three dominant components and the corresponding frequencies are f1 25.35 Hz, f2 97.65 Hz, and f3 193.36 Hz,

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Amplitude (um)

1336

f2

20
10

f3

f1
0

200

400

600

800

Frequency (Hz)
Fig. 14. FFT spectrum of the vibration signal of bush #5.

c1
c2

40
20
0
-20
-40
20
0

c3

Amplitude (um)

40
20
0
-20
-40

-20
10

-10

c4

0
0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

Time (s)
Fig. 15. The decomposed result of the vibration signal of bush #5 with EMD.

respectively. Obviously, f2 is the rotating frequency, and f3 is a harmonic component and equals two times rotating
frequency of the machine set. The component with 1/3 of the rotating frequency cannot be found from the frequency
spectrum. However, this component is critical to indicate the fault occurrence in the machine set because the 1/3 fractional
harmonic component of the rotating frequency is a symptom of an early rub-impact fault in rotor systems [18]. Therefore, it
could be concluded that an early rub-impact fault between the rotor and the bearing bushes occurred when the machine
set was running. Furthermore, frequency f1 25.35 Hz exists both in the frequency spectrum and the decomposition result
of the proposed method. It seems to be a fractional harmonic of the rotating frequency, which equals 1/4 of the rotating
frequency. But it is veried by further investigation that it is the rotating frequency of the low speed axle of the gearbox.
For comparison, the EMD method is used to decompose the same vibration signal. The decomposed rst four IMFs are
shown in Fig. 15. Because of the problem of mode mixing, the IMFs obtained with the EMD method are distorted severely,
and therefore the decomposition result cannot reveal the signal characteristics and provide accurate information. Thus, the
proposed method based on EEMD is able to effectively extract the rub-impact features that cannot be found from the
original vibration signal, its frequency spectrum as well as the IMFs of EMD.
5.3. Discussion
(1) From the results of the simulation experiment and rub-impact fault diagnosis of two rotating machine sets, it can be
seen that the EEMD method is able to solve the problem of mode mixing existing in the EMD method and achieve
better decomposition results than the EMD method. Thus, the proposed method based on EEMD is a powerful tool for
early rub-impact fault diagnosis in rotating machinery. It is also a promising diagnosis method for other faults
occurring in rotating machinery.
(2) Although the EEMD method achieves the obvious improvement compared to the EMD method, other issues, such as the
use of splines in the interpolation procedure, the calculation of mean value and signal end effects, still remain in the
EEMD method. Actually, a simple but effective ensemble method to alleviate end effects is used in the EEMD method of
this paper, which is described in Ref. [14]. In addition, the EEMD method introduces its own problems that have to do
with the magnitude of noise and number of ensembles. However, the main purpose of this paper is to apply EEMD to

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fault diagnosis of rotating machinery to overcome the problem of mode mixing existing in EMD. Finally, the EEMD
method produces better results than the EMD method. Actually, as some experts said, every method has its
shortcomings. For the advanced signal processing techniques presently used in fault diagnosis, wavelet transform,
spectral kurtosis, cyclostationarity analysis, EMD, etc., it is difcult to nd one technique is superior to the others in any
cases. Generally, aiming at the specic diagnosis problem, the best one may be selected by comparison.
(3) Moreover, both EMD and EEMD methods are not suitable for the automatic detection of faults. When using these two
methods, signicant expertise is required. User need to know physical interpretation of the results and mechanism of
the diagnosis object. Otherwise, it is difcult to obtain a reliable diagnosis result. Thus, there is a demand for
techniques recently that can make decision on the running health of the machine automatically and reliably. These
techniques can allow relatively unskilled users to make reliable decisions without the need for a diagnosis specialist to
examine data and diagnose problems. Some researchers have been investigating these techniques. For example, Refs.
[4,19] presented energy features extracted from IMFs of EMD, which can be used to automatic detection of gear faults.
Also, Refs. [20,21] proposed automatic fault detection methods of rolling element bearings based on EMD and articial
intelligent techniques. These ideas can be introduced to fault diagnosis of other components in rotating machinery. It is
an interesting and signicant research topic to develop automatic fault diagnosis methods based on EEMD. The authors
would like to investigate this topic in future.
6. Conclusions
The empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method provides a powerful tool for nonlinear and non-stationary signal
analysis. However, it has the problem of mode mixing so that the decomposed IMFs are distorted and unable to reect the
fault characteristics in fault diagnosis of rotating machinery precisely. To overcome this shortcoming, we propose a new
method based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) to diagnose rotating machinery faults in this paper. A
simulation experiment demonstrates that the EEMD based method can increase the decomposition precision and therefore
produce the IMFs with physical meaning. Two vibration signals from a rub-impact fault in a power generator and an early
rub-impact fault in a heavy oil catalytic cracking machine set are analyzed using the proposed method to diagnose the
faults. The application results show that the proposed method is able to extract the fault characteristic information and
identify the faults effectively.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the key project of National Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 50335030) and
National Hitech Research and Development Program of China (2006AA04Z430).
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