Predictive Rolling Bearing Maintenance

A method of predicting a fault in a rolling bearing, the rolling bearing including inner and outer rings and rolling bodies evenly angularly distributed therebetween, the method comprising:. processing (in the DSP system 8) a position signal (x(t)) indicative of a relative angular position of the inner ring with respect to the outer rings, and a vibration signal (y(t)) (by the accelerometer 7) indicative of speed-related vibrations in the rolling bearing, such that they correspond to either an angular displacement of the rolling bodies equal to an integer number of angular gaps between adjacent rolling bodies or an integer number of complete rotations of the inner ring with respect to the outer ring; . space sampling (in the A/D acquisition board 9) the processed vibration signal (y(t)) based on the processed position signal (x(t)); and. predicting a fault in the rolling bearing based on the space-sampled vibration signal (y(t)).