Complex function-based fault detection: a new method to measure the complexity of nonlinear time series

In this paper, we propose a new complexity computation based on the complex function. This measure exploits the dispersion Lempel–Ziv complexity (DLZC) and the dispersion statistical complexity measure based on Jensen–Shannon divergence (DCJS) of the analytic signal and constructs the binary complex function, called complex number complexity (CNC). The statistical measure depicts the complex system from different angle and mines more potential information. Through simulation experiments, we prove that the proposed method is able to detect data fluctuations more sensitively and accurately. For an application, the CNC is applied to fault detection which has different fault diameters and rotational speeds. The results deliver that the CNC measure can well represent the complexity of faulty bearings and has significant differences in any two fault types. The technique is effective to characterize different fault.