Full-life health assessment of rolling bearings under variable operating conditions based on vibration and oil debris information fusion

Health assessment of bearings is a critical task in the maintenance of rotating machinery. The complex operating conditions of rolling bearings pose significant challenges to full-life health assessment. In this study, a health assessment method based on vibration and oil debris information is proposed. First, an oil debris sensor was designed to collect oil debris images. Then, a health stage segmentation algorithm is proposed to determine the fault time of early and late-stage faults. Also, a two-dimensional fusion algorithm with a dynamic weighting mechanism is proposed. Relevant vibration standards are employed to further validate the effectiveness of the health assessment. To demonstrate the superiority of the fusion decision approach, novel health assessment methods are also introduced for comparison. The results indicate that the proposed method effectively accounts for both early and late-stage faults, avoids the impact of data fluctuations, and consistently outputs early warning information that aligns more closely with the actual remaining life. The proposed method shows considerable potential for full-life health monitoring of rolling bearings in rotating machinery.