Abstract
The wavelet transform is introduced to indicate short-time fault effects in associated vibration signals. The time-frequency and time-scale representations are unified in a general form of a three-dimensional wavelet transform, from which two-dimensional transforms with different advantages are treated as special cases derived by fixing either the scale or frequency variable. The Gaussian enveloped oscillating wavelet is recommended to extract different sizes of features from the signal. It is shown that the time-frequency and time-scale distributions generated by the wavelet transform are effective in identifying mechanical faults.