Patent ID: 8544331

Claim:
A method for detecting the existence of one or more faults of one or more mechanical components of an operating machine or a mechanical system from raw signal data comprising one or more target fault characteristic signals, one or more interference signals and intrinsic noise signals, said one or more target fault characteristic signals featuring periodically occurring frequency, phase and amplitude modulations, said method comprising: operating the machine or mechanical system including the one or more mechanical components, at least one of the one or more mechanical components being susceptible to developing one or more mechanical faults, said one or more mechanical faults each having a target fault characteristic signal, said target fault characteristic signal being created by a fault in said at least one mechanical component; obtaining said raw signal data with one or more sensors positioned proximate to the machine; transforming said raw signal data using one or more transformations which simultaneously incorporate any combination of two or more of frequency, phase and amplitude demodulations of said raw signal data into a new set of data; transforming said new set of data to a frequency domain; identifying a target fault characteristic signature from the frequency domain selected from the group consisting of an impulsive target signal, a non-impulsive target signal, a combination of multiple impulsive target signals, a combination of multiple non-impulsive target signals, and a combination of multiple impulsive and non-impulsive target signals, said target fault characteristic signature corresponding to said target fault characteristic signal; generating an alert corresponding to the identified target fault characteristic signature detected in the machine or mechanical system.