In recent years, acoustic emission (AE) sensors and AE-based techniques have been developed and tested for gearbox fault diagnosis. In general, AE-based techniques require much higher sampling rates than vibration analysis-based techniques for gearbox fault diagnosis. Therefore, it is questionable whether an AE-based technique would give a better or at least the same performance as the vibration analysis-based techniques using the same sampling rate. To answer the question, this paper presents a comparative study for gearbox tooth damage level diagnostics using AE and vibration measurements, the first known attempt to compare the gearbox fault diagnostic performance of AE- and vibration analysis-based approaches using the same sampling rate. Partial tooth cut faults are seeded in a gearbox test rig and experimentally tested in a laboratory. Results have shown that the AE-based approach has the potential to differentiate gear tooth damage levels in comparison with the vibration-based approach. While vibration signals are easily affected by mechanical resonance, the AE signals show more stable performance.
References
[1]
Link, H.; LaCava, W.; van Dam, J.; McNiff, B.; Sheng, S.; Wallen, R.; McDade, M.; Lambert, S.; Butterfield, S.; Oyague, F. Gearbox Reliability Collaborative Project Report: Findings from Phase 1 and Phase 2 Testing. NREL Technical Report: NREL/TP-5000-51885; National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Golden, CO, USA, 2011.
[2]
Astridge, D.G. Helicopter transmissions—Design for safety and reliability. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. Part G J. Aerosp. Eng. 1989, 203, 123–138.
[3]
Smith, J.D. Gear Noise and Vibration; Marcel Dekker Inc.: New York, NY, USA, 2003.
[4]
？kerblom, M. Gear Noise and Vibration—A Literature Survey; Maskinkonstruktion: Stockholm, Sweden, 2011.
[5]
Mathews, J.R. Acoustic Emission; Gordon and Breach Science Publishers Inc.: New York, NY, USA, 1983.
[6]
Al-Ghamd, A.M.; Mba, D. A comparative experimental study on the use of ae and vibration analysis for bearing defect identification and estimation of defect size. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 2006, 20, 1537–1571.
[7]
Tan, C.K.; Mba, D. Experimentally established correlation between acoustic emission activity, load, speed, and asperity contact of spur gears under partial elastohydrodynamic lubrication. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. Part J J. Eng. Tribol. 2005, 219, 401–409.
[8]
Tan, C.K.; Mba, D. A correlation between acoustic emission and asperity contact of spur gears under partial elastohydrodynamic lubrication. Int. J. COMADEM 2006, 9, 9–14.
[9]
Miller, R.K.; McIntire, P. Non-Destructive Testing Handbook; American Society of Non-destructive Testing: Columbus, OH, USA, 1987.
[10]
Tandon, N.; Mata, S. Detection of defects in gears by acoustic emission measurements. J. Acoust. Emiss. 1999, 19, 23–27.
[11]
Scheer, C.; Reimche, W.; Bach, F.W. Early fault detection at gear units by acoustic emission and wavelet analysis. J. Acoust. Emiss. 2007, 25, 331–340.
[12]
Yoshioka, T.; Fujiwara, T. A new acoustic emission source locating system for the study of rolling contact fatigue. Wear 1982, 81, 183–186.
[13]
Yoshioka, T.; Fujiwara, T. Application of acoustic emission technique to detection of rolling bearing failure. Am. Soc. Mech. Eng. 1984, 14, 55–76.
[14]
Yoshioka, T. Detection of rolling contact subsurface fatigue cracks using acoustic emission technique. Lubr. Eng. 1982, 49, 303–308.
[15]
Hawman, M.W.; Galinaitis, W.S. Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Rolling Element Bearings. Proceedings of IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium, Chicago, IL, USA, 2–5 October 1988; pp. 885–889.
[16]
Eftekharnejad, B.; Carrasco, M.R.; Charnley, B.; Mba, D. The application of spectral kurtosis on acoustic emission and vibrations from a defective bearing. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 2011, 25, 266–284.
Loutas, T.H.; Roulias, D.; Pauly, E.; Kostopoulos, V. The combined use of vibration, acoustic emission and oil debris on-line monitoring towards a more effective condition monitoring of rotating machinery. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 2012, 25, 1339–1352.
[19]
Ogbonnah, V. Condition Monitoring of Gear Failure with AE. M.Sc. Thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden, 2007.
[20]
Tomoya, M.; Katsumi, I.; Masana, K. Acoustic emission during fatigue crack growth in carburized gear tooth. Trans. Jpn. Soc. Mech. Eng. Part C 1994, 60, 2456–2461.
[21]
Baydar, N.; Ball, A. A comparative study of acoustic and vibration signals in detection of gear failures using wigner-ville distribution. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 2001, 15, 1091–1107.
[22]
Soua, S.; Lieshout, P.; Perera, A.; Gan, T.H.; Bridge, B. Determination of the combined vibrational and acoustic emission signature of a wind turbine gearbox and generator shaft in service as a pre-requisite for effective condition monitoring. Renew. Energy 2013, 51, 175–181.
[23]
Al-Balushi, K.R.; Samanta, B. Gear fault diagnosis using energy-based features of ae signals. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. Part I J. Syst. Control Eng. 2002, 216, 249–263.
[24]
Qu, Y.; Bechhoefer, E.; He, D.; Zhu, J. A new acoustic emission sensor based gear fault detection approach. Int. J. Progn. Health Manag. 2013, 4, 1–14.
[25]
Li, S. Effects of centrifugal load on tooth contact stresses and bending stresses of thin-rimmed spur gears with inclined webs. Mech. Mach. Theory 2013, 59, 34–47.
[26]
Tiwari, S.K.; Joshi, U.K. Stress analysis of mating involute spur gear teeth. Int. J. Eng. Res. Technol. 2012, 1, 2173–2180.
[27]
Sarkar, N.; Ellisb, R.E.; Mooreb, T.N. Backlash detection in geared mechanisms: Modeling, simulation, and experimentation. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 1997, 11, 391–408.
[28]
De la Cruz, M.; Rahnejat, H. Impact Dynamic Behaviour of Meshing Loaded Teeth in Transmission Drive Rattle. Proceedings of the 6th EUROMECH Nonlinear Dynamics Conference, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 30 June–4 July 2008; pp. 418–430.
[29]
Theodossiades, S.; Natsiavas, S. Nonlinear dynamics of gear-pair systems with periodic stiffness and backlash. J. Sound Vib. 2000, 229, 287–310.
[30]
Gnanakumarr, M.; Theodossiades, S.; Rahnejat, H.; Menday, M. Impact-induced vibration in vehicular driveline systems: Theoretical and experimental investigations. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. Part K Multibody Dyn. 2005, 219, 1–12.
[31]
Tuma, J. Gearbox noise and vibration prediction and control. Int. J. Acoust. Vib. 2009, 14, 99–110.
[32]
Budynas, R.G.; Nisbett, J.K. Shigley's Mechanical Engineering Design, 9th ed. ed.; McGraw Hill: New York, NY, USA, 2011.
[33]
McFadden, P.D. A revised model for the extraction of periodic waveforms by time domain averaging. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 1987, 1, 83–95.
[34]
McFadden, P.D.; Toozhy, M.M. Application of synchronous averaging to vibration monitoring of rolling element bearings. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 2000, 14, 891–906.
[35]
Bonnardot, F.; Badaoui, M.E.; Randall, R.B.; Daniere, J.; Guillet, F. Use of the acceleration signal of a gearbox in order to perform angular resampling (with limited speed fluctuation). Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 2005, 19, 766–785.
[36]
Braun, S. The extraction of periodic waveforms by time domain averaging. Acustica 1975.
[37]
Borghesani, P.; Pennacchi, P.; Chatterton, S.; Ricci, R. The velocity synchronous discrete fourier transform for order tracking in the field of rotating machinery. Mech. Syst. Signal Process. 2014, 44, 118–133.
[38]
Nooli, P.K. A Versatile and Computationally Efficient Condition Indicator for AH-64 Rotorcraft Gearboxes. M.Sc. Thesis, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA, 2011.
[39]
Antolick, L.J.; Branning, J.S.; Wade, D.R.; Dempsey, P.J. Evaluation of Gear Condition Indicator Performance on Rotorcraft Fleet. Proceedings of the American Helicopter Society 66th Annual Forum, Phoenix, AZ, USA, 11–13 May 2010; pp. 11–13.
