A Novel Narrowband Filtering Demodulation Method Based on Adaptive Multi-Level Spectra Segmentation Strategy and Its Application in Bearing Fault Diagnosis

Rolling bearings, as a key component of rotating machinery, require precise fault diagnosis to ensure the safe and reliable operation of industrial systems. Nevertheless, the performance of traditional narrowband filtering demodulation (NFD) methods is constrained by inherent limitations of spectral segmentation frameworks and insufficient discriminative capability of feature indicators (FIs). To address these limitations, this paper proposes a new NFD method based on an adaptive multi-level spectra segmentation strategy. Firstly, using power spectral density (PSD) as the analysis basis, an iterative framework is constructed to obtain multi-level spectral trend lines (STLs), which achieves multi-perspective characterization of spectral features. Secondly, the local minimum points of the STLs are used as the segmentation boundaries to extract the demodulation frequency band. Subsequently, a robust blind feature indicator, synergistic characterization criterion (SCC), is proposed, which can simultaneously fully evaluate periodicity and impulsiveness, guiding the selection of the optimal demodulation frequency band (ODFB). Finally, based on the enhanced demodulation spectrum, power exponent transformation is introduced to construct a generalized spectral family, and the adaptive determination of the optimal transformation parameter is guided by frequency-domain signal-to-noise ratio (FDSNR), thereby obtaining the generalized enhanced demodulation spectrum (GEDS). Validation experiments on laboratory and public datasets demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms Fast Kurtogram, Autogram, and CFFsgram, with average improvements of 63.86% and 89.06% in mean-peak ratio (MPR) and fault feature coefficient (FFC), respectively, and provides a new perspective for NFD and expands its application potential in bearing fault diagnosis and condition monitoring.