Spectrum Sparseness: A New Method for Frequency Spectrum Analysis Applied to Equipment Condition Assessment

A new method is introduced for machine condition monitoring and performance evaluation, which is easy to implement and suitable for engineering applications. The approach called spectrum sparseness is proposed based on the theory of sparse representation. In this paper, the proposed scheme is applied to the rolling bearing performance degradation assessment. Practical experiment results show that the spectrum sparseness trend for assessing the state of machine is more sensitive than other typical characteristics.