The relationship between second-order cyclostationary method and time-frequency distribution is studied, and cyclic autocorrelation（CA） function is indicated to be one sort of special time-frequency distribution method. Furthermore, a fault diagnosis method for reciprocating compressors based on empirical mode decomposition （EMD） and CA function is proposed, and then it is applied to the fault diagnosis of reciprocating compressor valve. Firstly, the vibration signal of reciprocating compressor valve is decomposed by using ENID method, and several intrinsic mode functions （IMFs） are obtained. Secondly, the IMFs are evaluated by some denoising criterions to remove the noise and interfering ones. Finally, the CA functions of the remained IMFs are calculated, which will be used to reconstruct the CA function of the original vibration signal. Engineering application indicates that this method can sufficiently inhibit the cross-interference items of CA function. Therefore, more explicit working conditions of reciprocating compressor components can be achieved.
