Important advancements in preventive maintenance of rotor-craft gear transmission systems are currently being sought for the development of an accurate machine health diagnostic system. Such a diagnostic system would use vibration or acoustic signals from the gear transmission system for (1) rapid on-line evaluation of gear wear or damage status, and (2) prediction of remaining gear life. Such health diagnostic capabilities would be essential for effective machine event/life management and advance warning before critical component failures. This paper demonstrates the use of vibration signature analysis procedures for health monitoring and diagnostics of a gear transmission system. The procedures used in this paper include

(i) the numerical simulation of the dynamics of a gear transmission system with single and multiple tooth damage,

(ii) the application of the Wigner-Ville Distribution (WVD) and the Wavelet transform in damage identification and quantification of damaged tooth based on the numerically generated vibration signal, and

(iii) the application of both WVD and the Wavelet transform on experimental data at various stage of gear failure obtained from an accelerated gear damage test rig. This paper demonstrates that the developed signature analysis procedure can successfully detect faulty gears in both numerically simulated and experimental tested transmission system. General conclusions on identification and quantification of gear tooth damage are drawn based on the results of this study.

Issue Section:
Technical Papers
Keywords:
mechanical engineering, maintenance engineering, identification, fault diagnosis, reliability theory, vibrations, wavelet transforms
Topics:
Damage, Gears, Signals, Vibration, Wavelet transforms, Wavelets, Computer simulation, Gear teeth, Rotors
1.
Astridge
,
D. G.
,
1989
, “
Design for Safety and Reliability
,”
Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng.
,
203
, pp.
123
–
138
.
2.
Coy
,
J. J.
,
Townsend
,
D. P.
, and
Zaretskey
,
E. V.
,
1976
, “
Dynamic Capacity and Surface Fatigue Life for Spur and Helical Gears
,”
ASME J. Lubr. Technol.
,
98
(
2
), April, pp.
267
–
276
.
3.
Lundlberg, G., and Palmgren, A., 1947, “
Dynamic Capacity of Rolling Bearings,” ACTA Polytechnic Mechanical Engineering Series 1,3, Stockholm.
4.
Choy
,
F. K.
,
Polyshchuk
,
V.
,
Zakrajsek
,
J. J.
,
Handschuh
,
R. F.
, and
Townsend
,
D. P.
,
1996
, “
Analysis of the Effects of Surface Pitting and Wear of the Vibrations of a Gear Transmission System
,”
J. of Tribology International
,
28
(
1
), pp.
77
–
83
.
5.
Choy
,
F. K.
,
Huang
,
S.
,
Zakrajsek
,
J. J.
,
Hanschuh
,
R. F.
, and
Townsend
,
D. P.
,
1996
, “
Vibration Signature Analysis of a Faulted Gear System
,”
Propul. Power
,
12
(
2
), March-April, pp.
289
–
295
.
6.
Stewart, R. M., 1977, “Some Useful Data Analysis Techniques for Gearbox Diagnostics,” Report MHM/R/10/77. Machine Health Monitoring Group, Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, July.
7.
McFadden
,
P. D.
,
1986
, “
Detecting Fatigue Cracks in Gears by Amplitude and Phase Demodulation of the Meshing Vibration
,”
ASME J. Vibr. Acoust., Stress, Reliab. Des.
,
108
(
2
), April, pp.
165
–
170
.
8.
Choy
,
F. K.
,
Ruan
,
Y. F.
,
Zakrajsek
,
J. J.
, and
Oswald
,
F. B.
,
1993
, “
Modal Simulation of Gearbox Vibration with Experimental Correlation
,”
Propul. Power
,
9
(
2
), pp.
301
–
306
.
9.
Boashash
,
B.
, and
Black
,
P. J.
, 1987, “An Efficient Real Time Implementation of the Wigner-Ville Distribution,” IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal Process., ASSP35(11), November.
10.
Forrester, B. D., 1990, “Analysis of Gear Vibration in the Time Frequency Domain,” Proc. Of the 44th Meeting of the Mechanical Failure Prevention Group, Feb.
11.
McFadden, P. D., and Wang, W. J., 1991, “Time Frequency Domain Analysis of Vibration Signal for Machinery Diagnostics (II) the Wigner-Ville Distribution,” University of Oxford, Report No. OUEL 1891.
12.
McFadden
,
P. D.
, and
Wang
,
W. J.
,
1996
, “
Application of Wavelets to Gearbox Vibration Signals for Fault Detection
,”
J. Sound Vib.
,
192
(
5
), pp.
927
–
939
.
13.
Lin
,
S. T.
, and
McFadden
,
P. D.
,
1997
, “
Gear Vibration Analysis by B-Spline Wavelet-Based Linear Wavelet Transform
,”
Mech. Syst. Signal Process.
,
11
(
4
), pp.
603
–
609
.
14.
Adewusi
,
S. A.
, and
Al-Bedoor
,
B. O.
,
2001
, “
Wavelet Analysis of Vibration Signals of an Overhang Rotor with a Propagating Transverse Crack
,”
J. Sound Vib.
,
246
(
5
), pp.
777
–
793
.
15.
Choy
,
F. K.
,
Xu
,
G.
,
Polyshchuk
,
V.
,
Zakrajsek
,
J. J.
, and
Townsend
,
D. P.
,
1999
, “
Effects of Gear Tooth Imperfection on Dynamics of Gear Transmission Systems
,”
International Journal of Turbo and Jet Engines
,
16
, pp.
161
–
176
.
16.
Claasen
,
T.
, and
Mechlenbrauker
,
W.
,
1980
, “
The Wigner Distribution—A Tool for Time-Frequency Signal Analysis
,”
Philips J. Res.
,
35
(
I
), pp.
217
–
250
, Part II: pp. 276–300, Part III: pp. 372–389.
17.
Mallat, S., 1998, A Wavelet Tour of Signal Processing, Academic Press, New York.
18.
Polyshchuk
,
V.
,
Choy
,
F. K.
, and
Braun
,
M. J.
,
2002
, “
Gear Fault Detection with Joint Time-frequency Based Parameter NP4
,”
J. Manage. Stud. (Oxford)
,
8
(
1
), pp.
57
–
70
.
19.
Zakrajsek, J. J., Handschuh, R. F., and Decker, H. J., “Application of Fault Detection Technique to Spiral Bevel Gear Fatigue Data” NASA TM 106467, April 1994.
Copyright © 2003
 by ASME
You do not currently have access to this content.