Research on the Electromagnetic Conversion Method of Stator Current for Local Fault Detection of a Planetary Gearbox

Motor current signature analysis (MCSA) is a useful technique for planetary gear fault detection. Motor current signals have easier accessibility and are free from time-varying transfer path effects. If the fault symptoms in current signals are well understood, it will be more beneficial to develop effective current signal processing methods. Some researchers have developed mathematical models to study the characteristics of current signals. However, no one has considered the coupling of rotor eccentricity and gear failures, resulting in an inaccurate analysis of the current signals. This study considers the sun gear failure of a planetary gearbox and the eccentricity of the motor rotor. An improved induction motor model is proposed based on the magnetomotive force (MMF) to simulate the stator current. By analyzing the current, the modulation relationships of gearbox meshing frequency, fault frequency, power supply frequency, and gear rotating frequency are obtained. The proposed model is validated to some extent using experimental data.

Gear tooth breakage analysis based on multi-order modulated sideband RMS trending method

The fault characteristic signal energy for early gear tooth breakage is relatively weak and easily drowned by other signals, which is not conducive to the study of the fault development stage. A multi-order modulated sideband RMS (Root Mean Square) trend analysis method is proposed to analyse the development trend of the broken gear fault characteristics. By using this method to analyse gear breakage faults, the multi-order modulated sideband RMS trend analysis method can effectively determine the fault deterioration and fault stabilisation stages.

Weak Feature Extraction of Local Gear Damage Based on Underdamped Asymmetric Periodic Potential Stochastic Resonance

The enhancement of the detection of weak signals against a strong noise background is a key problem in local gear fault diagnosis. Because the periodic impact signal generated by local gear damage is often modulated by high-frequency components, fault information is submerged in its envelope signal when demodulating the fault signal. However, the traditional bistable stochastic resonance (BSR) system cannot accurately match the asymmetric characteristics of the envelope signal because of its symmetrical potential well, which weakens the detection performance for weak faults. In order to overcome this problem, a novel method based on underdamped asymmetric periodic potential stochastic resonance (UAPPSR) is proposed to enhance the weak feature extraction of the local gear damage. The main advantage of this method is that it can better match the characteristics of the envelope signal by using the asymmetry of its potential well in the UAPPSR system and it can effectively enhance the extraction effect of periodic impact signals. Furthermore, the proposed method enjoys a good anti-noise capability and robustness and can strengthen weak fault characteristics under different noise levels. Thirdly, by reasonably adjusting the system parameters of the UAPPSR, the effective detection of input signals with different frequencies can be realized. Numerical simulations and experimental tests are performed on a gear with a local root crack, and the vibration signals are analyzed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. The comparison results show that the proposed method possesses a better resonance output effect and is more suitable for weak fault feature extraction under a strong noise background.