REAL-TIME RELIABILITY ASSESSMENT AND LIFETIME PREDICTION FOR BEARINGS

USING THE INDIVIDUAL STATE DEVIATION BASED ON THE MANIFOLD DISTANCE

Zu-wang Gan1,2 , Jian Ma1,2 , Chen Lu1,2 , Hongmei Liu1 and Tian-min Shan3
1 School
of Reliability and Systems Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China
2 Science& Technology on Reliability & Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Beijing, China
3 AVIC Shanghai Aero Measurement & Control Technology Research Institute, Shanghai, China

E-mail: majian3128@126.com
ICETI-2014 R1040_SCI
No. 15-CSME-52, E.I.C. Accession 3827

ABSTRACT
In recent years, the real-time reliability evaluation and life prediction for rolling bearings has attracted more
attention. Most of the existing methods employ real-time transformation of traditional reliability indices,
performance degradation trajectory or distribution analysis, which usually have certain limitations in terms
of accuracy and applicability. This paper proposes a method for bearing real-time reliability evaluation and
life prediction to avoid the negligence of real-time transformation of the monitored individual, as well as
reduce the errors caused by the randomness from individual bearing operational process. The individual
state deviation of a running rolling bearing geometrically measured by manifold distance is normalized
into a state deviation degree, which is used to formulate a modified real-time reliability model for real-
time reliability evaluation and lifetime prediction. Finally, the feasibility and efficiency of this method is
validated by bearing run-to-failure experiments.

Keywords: individual state deviation; real-time reliability evaluation; manifold learning; manifold dis-
tance; lifetime prediction.

VALUATION EN TEMPS-REL DE LA FIABILIT ET DE LA PRVISION DE LA DURE DE

VIE DES ROULEMENTS BILLES BASE SUR LTAT DE DVIATION INDIVIDUELLE

RSUM
Rcemment lvaluation en temps-rel de la fiabilit et la prvision de la dure de vie des roulements billes
a attir mon attention. La plupart des mthodes existantes utilise la transformation en temps-rel dindices
traditionnels de fiabilit, de la dgradation de la performance de trajectoire ou lanalyse de la distribution,
ces mthodes ont habituellement certaines limites quand il sagit de prcision et dapplicabilit. Cet article
propose une mthode pour lvaluation en temps-rel de la fiabilit et de la prvision de la dure de vie pour
viter ce que la transformation en temps-rel de llment surveille nglige. galement pour rduire les
erreurs causes par le caractre alatoire du processus oprationnel des lments de roulement individuels.
Ltat de dviation individuelle dun roulement billes mesur gomtriquement est normalis en un tat
de degr de dviation, lequel est utilis pour formuler un modle de fiabilit en tems-rel dvaluation et
de prvision de la dure de vie. Finalement, la faisabilit et lefficacit de cette mthode est valide par des
expriences dexploitation allant jusqu dfaillance.

Mots-cls : tat de dviation individuelle; valuation en temps-rel de la fiabilit; prvision de dure de vie.

Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015 691
1. INTRODUCTION
The rolling bearing is a key component of industrial machinery and plays a crucial role in the operation of ro-
tating machinery. Statistics show that bearing damages result in many of the rotating machinery faults. And
timely detection of bearing failures can avoid lots of catastrophic accidents. However, the weak symptoms
or features indicating early incipient fault are easily masked by the intrinsic normal component, disturbed
by the noise component, and so difficultly discovered, which makes it challengeable to conduct an accurate
diagnosis, real-time reliability assessment and residual life prediction for bearings when an early incipient
fault develops.
Kim and Kolarik [1] first proposed the real-time conditional reliability and performed real-time reliability
prediction for an individual tool, which was the opening of reliability assessment and prediction. So far, re-
search strategies of this field have gradually formed, including but not limited to real-time transformation of
traditional reliability indices and performance degradation analysis [2]. The former is only applicable to as-
sess real-time reliability for power systems [3], which is determined by the fact that the correlation between
reliability indices of power system and environmental variables, state variables is considerably strong and
easily established. The latter consists of the methods based on performance degradation trajectory or perfor-
mance degradation distribution [4]. The first type of methods employs a variety of performance degradation
models [5] to fit the performance degradation trajectory roughly regarded as the true degradation process.
These methods ignoring real-time transformation of the monitored individual are only applicable to some
specific situations where performance variables characterizing the degradation degree could be directly mea-
sured. Meanwhile, a good accuracy requires the well match between chosen mathematical models and true
degradation processes. The second type of methods that considers the influence of varying performance
variables on reliability of the monitored individual assumes that degradation distribution model or distribu-
tion of model parameter is known, which often brings about poor accuracy and limited applicability. They
are all bypass traditional statistical reliability methods and concentrate on extracting reliability information
from performance degeneration models, but seldom take individual state deviation into account.
In this paper, individual state deviation which would be utilized to modify real-time reliability model,
is proposed to represent the degree that monitors individual operating status deviates from the population.
The approach, therefore, incorporates the real-time monitoring information of individual bearing into the
population information. Furthermore, results calculated from bearing run-to-failure experiments data will
be reported to verify and validate the proposed approach.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 details the proposed method. In Section 3,
we summarize and discuss the experimental results. Finally, concluding remarks are presented.

2. METHODOLOGY
2.1. Hybrid Strategy for On-Line Individual Reliability Assessment
Degeneration is a physical or chemical process gradually weakening the product performance, finally re-
sulting in destined failures. Traditional methods for reliability assessment are based on historical lifetime
records coming from a batch of products once in service or failure-times from product life testing, aimed at
obtaining a failure distribution by virtue of probability and statistics theory. Such reliability modeling un-
avoidably tends to reflect product population characteristics rather than an individual product unit, if directly
applied to estimate reliability in day-to-day operations where applications and environments may be time-
varying. Fortunately, highly developed equipment in health monitoring technology bridges the gap between
traditional reliability and real-time reliability. With the help of sensors, real-time monitored information can
be acquired throughout the product lifecycle, which makes it possible for researchers to have a new insight
into the degeneration process and reliability assessment. Unlike what has been done in [68], this study
seeks to modify the population reliability through on-line monitoring information.

692 Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015
 Fig. 1. Performance degeneration trajectory and reliability curve.

With regard to degenerative products, due to their own manufacturing process, environmental stress,
randomness from individual operational process and other factors, degradation curve D(t) of the individual
product unit usually diverges from population degradation trajectory D0 (t). The individual state deviation
[9] can be measured as the distance between the real-time monitoring performance degradation metrics and
the population degradation trajectory. This could be mapped to a value ranging from 0 to 1, usually called the
normalized individual state deviation or individual state deviation degree. From the product performances
point of view, real-time reliability is a probability that indicates to what degree an individual can successfully
survive to function in the next time period, based on current or recent condition monitoring information. In
other words, reliability can be roughly regarded as an index characterizing product degeneration status.
So there exists a relationship between real-time reliability R(t) and degeneration condition D(t), which is
difficult to directly establish. However, we can firstly assume that population reliability R0 (t) can be seen
as a coarse reliability for the individual product unit. Then, the coarse reliability will be refined as the final
reliability through the individual state deviation degree which contributes to reliability deviation between the
monitored one and the population. Thus on-line individual monitored information could be utilized to yield
the real-time reliability through the combination with population reliability model, which is intuitionally
feasible.

2.2. Performance Degradation Characteristics Extraction from Vibration Signals

In many industrial applications, this hybrid methodology can be implemented through real-time physical
monitoring using on-line data sensors which provide performance measurements such as temperatures,
pressures, or vibration signals and so on. This study, being aimed at the rolling bearings whose main fail-
ure modes are wear and damage, naturally takes vibration signals indicating actual bearing health status as
physical performance measurement which is usually called performance degeneration data. However, these
on-stationary time series are not directly related to the performance degeneration. Their features directly
revealing the performance degeneration should be extracted so that can be used to assess reliability. Some
time-domain indexes through statistical methods have been being used to perform reliability assessment (see
e.g. [10]). Arising from the basic assumption that the process generating signals is stationary and linear,
these simple features can almost not capture time-frequency characteristics hidden in performance degener-
ation data. Empirical mode decomposition (EMD), a self-adaptive non-parametric time-frequency analysis
tool for nonlinear and non-stationary signals, therefore, is utilized to extract bearing health information
termed as performance degeneration features contained in vibration signals.

Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015 693

Step Details
1 Initialize parameters
2 Extract the ith IMF
3 Separate IMF
4 Stop criteria for EMD
Table 1. The EMD algorithm.
Set iteration index i = 1, residual signal r0 (t) = x(t).
Let j = 0 and hi j (t) = ri1 (t). Identify the local minima and the local maxima of
hi j (t). Interpolate the local minima and the local maxima to produce the lower and
the upper envelopes of hi j (t). Compute the mean of the lower and upper envelopes
mi j (t). Let hi j (t) = hi j (t) mi j (t). If hi j (t) is an IMF then set ci (t) = hi j (t), else
go to next sifting with j = j + 1.
Let ri1 (r) = ri (t) ci (t) the difference between ri (t) and ci (t).
If ri (t) satisfies the stop criteria for EMD, then set ri (t) as the residue, and termi-
nate the EMD process. Otherwise, let i = i + 1, return to step 2.

The EMD method based on the simple assumption that any signal contains different simple oscillatory
modes was introduced by Huang et al. [11] and has miraculous ability to decompose a signal into some
IMFs. The number of decomposed IMFs is usually finite. An IMF (abbreviation of intrinsic mode function)
is a function that follows two requirements: (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 defined by local maxima and the envelope defined by the local minima is zero. An IMF represents
a simple oscillatory mode imbedded in the signal and does not have an explicit expression in closed form. It
is obtained from signal decomposition via computationally iterative sifting process.
The signal (x(t) = {x1 , x2 , . . . , xN } measured at the monitoring time t is decomposed into n IMFs
c1 (t), c2 (t), . . . , cn (t) and a residual rn (t) using the EMD algorithm summarized in Table 1. Namely, the
signal can be approximated by a superposition of a series of IMFs as written by
n
x(t) = ci (t) + rn (t). (1)
i=1

Each IMF contains lower-frequency oscillations than the prior-extracted one, while rn (t) represents the
mean tendency of signal x(t). Once certain level of wear or damage resides in monitored bearing, the
corresponding energy of every relative IMF will have different level of impact. Thus, these relative energy
values can be regarded as bearing performance degeneration features, calculated as below.
N
Ej = |c jk |2 , (2)
k=1

where c jk denotes amplitude of discrete points in IMF c j (t). Therefore, multivariate performance degener-
ation indicator can be formed, and then normalized using the obtained energy value, as below.

T = [E1 /E, E2 /E, . . . , En /E], (3)

!1/2
n
E= |Ei |2 . (4)
i=1

2.3. Calculation of Individual State Deviation Using Manifold Learning

Given its powerful ability to comprehensively and subtly capture energy distribution characteristics induced
by certain wear or damage degree, the EMD method can extract as much useful real-time information as
possible, which is often high-dimensional. Such luxurious degeneration information definitely contributes

694 Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015
to the improvement of reliability estimation. However, obtain individual state deviation should be the im-
perative and key step for reliability estimation and life prediction. While there are some works on obtaining
individual state deviation in general, they do not explicitly take into account the structure of the manifold on
which the degeneration data may possibly reside.
Suppose that these extracted high-dimensional energy vectors are sampled from some underlying mani-
fold; each feature vector or data point and its neighbors will lie on a patch indicating some certain level of
performance degeneration in the manifold, for which different patches correspond to different bearing health
states. This section first presents the establishment of the underlying manifold on which the trajectory of
bearing performance degradation can be recognized and described well. The Locality Preserving Projec-
tions (LPP) [12] was originally introduced to improve the nonlinear Laplacian Eigenmap [13], which is a
classical manifold learning method. To recover meaningful low-dimensional structures embedded in high-
dimensional energy feature vector space, the LPP method is utilized to obtain the population degeneration
trajectory located in the embedded manifold, by clustering the degeneration data acquired throughout the
entire run-to-failure process of training bearing samples. More specifically, the bearing performance feature
vectors extracted from the life-cycle degenerative data is used as high-dimensional inputs to construct man-
ifold by the algorithmic procedure detailed in [12]. In other words, the degeneration information contained
in the original features can be completely clustered on the low-dimensional manifold, which is the intrinsic
manifold.
After manifold learning using the LPP method, the dimensionality of performance degeneration feature
vector is reduced for each bearing sample, and it is clustered in patches that form a new intrinsic manifold.
Therefore, data points with similar health status or degeneration condition lie on the same patch scattered in
manifold, and the bearing population degeneration information is preserved in the intrinsic manifold, i.e. the
population health manifold. In curved space, the manifold distance (MD) is a generalization of the notion of
Euclidean distance [14]. For data points that exhibit a complex manifold structure, the classical Euclidean
distance fails to reflect global consistency compared to MD. The MD between two data points located in
a patch with the similar health states is smaller than that in different patches with different health states.
We define P-MD as: how far the current bearing health status deviates from the corresponding population
degradation state at the same time. The real-time extracted vector point x denotes the current bearing health
status, the corresponding population degeneration state can be identified on the population health manifold
M.
Therefore, the P-MD can geometrically represent the individual state deviation at any time. Table 2
describes the procedure of P-MD calculation. Afterwards, the individual state deviation is normalized into a
state deviation M-MD degree, which is used to calculate the real-time reliability by combining with bearing
population reliability.

2.4. Normalization of the Individual State Deviation

The individual state deviation degree or normalized individual state has been introduced as an index to metric
the deviation of the individual operating status from the population. After choosing arctangent function as
the normalization function, the individual state deviation degree can be formulated as
2
a = arctan(cP MD), (5)

where P-MD denotes individual state deviation, a denotes individual state deviation degree and c is a
unknown parameter. The c can be determined through the following process.

Step 1. Calculate sequence for each training bearing. Supposing that {r1 , r2 , . . . , rn } is the perfor-
mance degeneration feature vector sequence for a training bearing extracted using the EMD method.

Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015 695
 Table 2. The procedure for P-MD calculation.
Step Details
1 Identify corresponding Find the nearest points close to x in M by the rule: if manifold length L(x, x j )
patch Mx for point x is closer than ( neighborhood) or if x j is one of K nearest neighbors of x
(K neighborhood). The manifold length is defined as L(x, x j ) = d(x,x j )
1, where d(x, x j ) is the Euclidean distance and > 1 is the flexing factor.
2 Construct graph Let data points of Mx and x be the nodes of graph G = (V, E). A path con-
necting p0 and p1 is denoted as p = (p0 , p1 , . . . , pl ) where pk V (0 k l)
and (pk , pk+1 ) E (0 k < l).
3 Define manifold distance in Let Pi, j denote the set of all paths connecting data points xi and x j .
the graph G The manifold distance between xi and x j is defined as D(xi , x j ) =
min pPi, j l1
k=1 L(pk , pk+1 ) by searching for the shortest path in the graph
G.
|G|1
4 Calculate individual state Calculated by P-MD = j=1 (D(x, x j )/(|G| 1) where |G| represents the
deviation number of the nodes of G.

Specifically, ri indicates the operational status feature vector at instant ti . Then, according to the pro-
cedure for P-MD calculation shown in Table 2, the corresponding individual state deviation sequence
{P MD1 , P MD2 , . . . , P MDn } can be obtained.

Step 2. Calculate reliability sequence for each training bearing. The rolling bearing failure often follows
a Weibull distribution with the two parameters shown in Eq. (6), which is usually called a reliability model.
The distribution function of each bearing sample must be first updated so that it can be used to obtain its
own real-time reliability:
m t m1 (t/)m
 
f (t) = e , (6)

where m represents shape parameter, represents scale parameter, and () is the famous Gamma function.
The shape parameter m is regulated by the bearing population while is determined by each bearing indi-
vidual. Therefore, for each bearing sample, if its lifetime T is known, its scale parameter can be calculated
as follows:
T
= 1

. (7)
m +1
When updating the distribution function for each bearing sample with its own scale parameter , its reli-
ability sequence {R1 , R2 , . . . , Rn } can be easily calculated. Specifically, Ri symbols the reliability of instant ti .

Step 3. Calculate individual state deviation degree sequence for each training bearing. In this part, the
individual state deviation degree is determined by the following rule:

if T > T0 then a1 = (1 Ri )/(1 R0i else ai = Ri /R0i . (8)

where T denotes lifetime of a bearing sample, T0 denotes lifetime of the bearing population calculated by
averaging lifetime of all training bearing samples, and R0i denotes the reliability of the bearing population at
instant ti which is determined in the same way as Ri using the population failure distribution. The individual
state deviation degree sequence {a1 , a2 , . . . , an } could be obtained for each training bearing only if the index
i traverses all nstants.

696 Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015
 Step 4. Fit normalization function. The parameter c for each training bearing can be identified by fit-
ting Eq. (5) using least-squares method separately to its corresponding data points {(P MD1 , a1 ), (P
MD2 , a2 ), . . . , (P MDn , an )}. Then the average of all c values is recognized as the final parameter c.

2.5. Real-Time Reliability Evaluation and Life Prediction

First, the current performance degradation feature vector is inputted to obtain the current P-MD for the
testing bearing. Second, the individual state deviation is normalized to the individual state deviation degree
a. Finally, this current operational status feature vector r is compared with r0 at the same time with respect
to Euclidian norm, if ||r|| > ||r0 || then R = a R0 else R = 1 a (1 R0 ), which is often called modified
real-time reliability model. It should be noted that r0 represents the average of the performance degeneration
feature vectors for all training bearings, R0 represents the current population reliability, and represents the
real-time reliability.
Suppose that real-time reliability for the testing bearing can be calculated as
{(t1 , R1 ), (t2 , R2 ), , (tn , Rn )} through the modified real-time reliability model. Through the reformulation
of Eq. (6), the reliability function of the testing bearing can be obtained:

R(t) = exp{(t/0 )m }. (9)

Moreover, its lifetime can be derived from Eq. (7) and is calculated by
 
1
510T = 0 +1 , (10)
m
where the shape parameter m is same as the population; the scale parameter 0 can be determined by fitting
Eq. (9) from the known data points {(t1 , R1 ), (t2 , R2 ), . . . , (tn , Rn )} for the testing bearing. Obviously, the
current residual life of the testing bearing is formulated as follows:
 
1
Tr = T Tcurrent = 0 + 1 Tcurrent . (11)
m

2.6. Framework of On-Line Reliability Evaluation for Bearings

The aforementioned constitutes the completed flow for bearing real-time reliability assessment and life
prediction. The process can be summarized as shown in Fig. 2.
The procedure can be roughly divided into three parts. Off-line population health manifold construc-
tion and normalization function fitting are indicated by the lighter shades in Fig. 2. The population health
manifold is first constructed by applying the LPP method to the performance degeneration feature vectors
that are extracted from the performance measurements (i.e. vibration signals) of the training bearings using
the EMD method. Then the constructed population health manifold is used to obtain the individual state
deviation of the testing bearing. And its individual state deviation can be normalized into an individual state
deviation degree using the fitted normalization function. Finally, the real-time reliability evaluation and
residual life prediction are realized based on the reliability model modified using the real-time individual
state deviation degree, which incorporates real-time monitored degeneration information contained in the
vibration sensors data into the population reliability characteristics.

3. CASE STUDY
3.1. Experimental Setup
The experimental verification of bearing real-time reliability assessment and lifetime prediction were con-
ducted by using the acquired data from a designed bearing test-rig, as shown in Fig. 3. The test bearing,

Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015 697
 Fig. 2. Flowchart of the proposed methodology.

Fig. 3. Experimental setup.

698 Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015
 Fig. 4. Illustration of acquisition parameters for vibration signals.

Fig. 5. Time domain waveform for bearing B1.

a deep groove ball bearing of 6205-2RS JEM SKF was assembled in the motor. The accelerometer was
installed on the magnetic base shell to capture vibration signals of the bearings.
The run-to-failure experiment was introduced to eight bearings. The first seven bearings were used as
training samples and the last one for testing sample. Vibration data used in this study was acquired at
a sampling rate of 12 kHz, with a rotating speed of 1790 rpm. Data acquisition was performed every
70 minutes, and the sampling length is 1 second.

3.2. Experimental Results and Discussion

3.2.1. Performance degeneration features extraction
According to the sensing strategy illustrated in Fig. 4, the raw vibration signals of eight bearings were
collected as well as time-to-failures shown in Table 3. Figure 5 describes two signals (a) and (b) of bearing
B1 corresponding to the 2th and 100th recording, respectively.
The performance degeneration feature vectors were determined by the previously proposed method. As
shown in Fig. 6, the signal (b) is decomposed into 13 IMFs by the EMD, each of which has a distinct time-
frequency characteristic. The vectors were calculated using the first eight IMF components nearly carrying
all of impact energy sensitive to bearing performance degeneration while the remaining IMFs carry almost
none. Such feature vector can effectively reflect bearing operating status or degeneration condition.

Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015 699
 Table 3. Lifetimes of the eight bearings [hour].
Bearing B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7 B8
Lifetime 381 403 343 357 319 339 304 300

Fig. 6. Decomposed results of signal (b) of bearing B1.

Fig. 7. Bearing performance degradation on the population health manifold.

700 Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015
 Table 4. Parameters of the reliability models for each training sample and the bearing population.
Bearing B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7 BP
m 10.64 10.64 10.64 10.64 10.64 10.64 10.64 10.64
365.14 386.22 328.72 342.14 305.72 324.89 291.35 359.04

Table 5. P-MD values of the eight bearings.

Time 1 2 100
B1 0.00008525 0.00006408 0.00004910
B2 0.00055163 0.00023022 0.00004880
B3 0.00009872 0.00000862 0.00002822
B4 0.00031722 0.00013588 0.00016470
B5 0.00732159 0.00342159 0.00029331
B6 0.00377337 0.00042663 0.00033801
B7 0.00004871 0.00007610 0.00008294
B8 0.00006442 0.00006893 0.00039613

3.2.2. Manifold distance-based P-MD calculation

After extraction, performance degeneration feature vectors were sent to calculate in the population health
manifold using the previous detailed procedure. The P-MD values for each of the eight bearings at all
instants are shown in Table 5. In addition, the population health manifold was constructed by the perfor-
mance degeneration feature vectors of the first seven bearings B1-B7 using the LPP method. As shown in
Fig. 7, the patches indicating different certain levels of performance degeneration can be scattered, clustered
and clearly visible on the population health manifold, which captures well the law of bearing performance
degeneration.

3.2.3. Normalization function fitting

On the basis of the lifetimes of the seven training samples shown in Table 3, the reliability for each training
bearing and the bearing population were modeled by identifying shape parameter and scale parameter. These
parameters governing the reliability models are shown in Table 4. Based on the determined reliability
models, the reliability sequences for each training bearing and the population were calculated. The state
deviation degree sequences for each training bearing were also obtained by the rule detailed in Eq. (8). The
corresponding P-MD sequences are shown in Table 5. Therefore, the least-squares method was used to
identify c values for the seven training bearings, respectively and averaging the seven c values can easily
obtain parameter c = 7752.

3.2.4. Real-time reliability assessment and lifetime prediction

Considering non-significant degeneration trend at earlier stage, the performance degeneration feature vec-
tors at instants 251280 for the testing bearing B8 were used as testing data points. Their correspond-
ing P-MD values previously calculated using manifold distance were normalized into a state deviation de-
gree sequence which was utilized to modify the bearing population reliability model for the realization of
real-time reliability evaluation, according to what had elaborated in Section 2.5. The result is shown in
Fig. 8.
Now fitting Eq. (9) using least square method to the data points shown in Fig. 8 to identify the scale
parameter for the bearing B8. The result is 0 = 292.72. According to Eq. (10), the predicted lifetime for
the bearing B8 is 305.44. Compared with the true failure time 300, the error is only 5.44. It could be helpful
to make a decision for maintenance. As the energy induced by excessive-wear or damage increases fast at

Transactions of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2015 701
 Fig. 8. Reliability for bearing B8 assessed at instants 251280.

the end of run-to-failure experiment for the bearing B8, the degree of reliability reduces sharply. Therefore,
it can also demonstrate the reliability process well.

4. CONCLUSIONS
This study presents an approach for bearing real-time reliability evaluation and lifetime prediction. First,
reliability models for bearing population and each training sample are established. The population health
manifold is constructed using LPP based on EMD. Through the MD, the individual state deviation is ob-
tained, which will be normalized into state deviation degree for testing bearing sample. A modified reliabil-
ity model is utilized to assess real-time reliability and predict bearing lifetime. Its feasibility and efficiency
are verified in the experiments.
Generally speaking, the combination between bearing population information and individual state de-
viation degree based on manifold learning avoids some drawback in traditional methods. Nevertheless,
additional works are needed to further validate the method in wider real-world applications, particularly in
the cases with varying operating conditions.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61074083 and
51105019), as well as the Technology Foundation Program of National Defense (Grant No. Z132013B002).

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