Application of modal and harmonic analysis to predict the automotive transmission vibration at an early stage of design

Introduction (problem statement and relevance). The need to increase the operating speeds and input torque of automobile transmissions because of their vibration is becoming a more and more urgent problem.The purpose of the study was to substantiate the applicability of harmonic analysis, which makes it possible to determine the actual values of vibration values during a steady oscillatory process, for the initial assessment of the gearbox vibration activity.Methodology and research methods. The calculation of the gearbox vibration activity was carried out by modal and harmonic analyses, implemented by the finite element method, and followed by the experimental study of gearbox vibration on a test bench.Scientific novelty and results. The presented experimental and calculated results of the research show that the difference between the experimental and calculated values is no more than 4.2%. This proves the possibility of applying modal and harmonic analysis to predict the gearbox vibration state at an early stage of product design at the stand.Practical significance. The given calculation algorithm makes it possible to predict, with a sufficient degree of accuracy, the vibration of the gearbox before the manufacture of a prototype in experimental production.

Fault diagnosis of gearbox based on improved polynomial adaptive chirp mode decomposition algorithm

The adaptive chirp mode decomposition (ACMD) has good time-frequency representation results in analyzing chirp signals, while there is a time-frequency ambiguity problem in the analysis of variable speed planetary gearbox vibration signals. To address this problem, a planetary gearbox fault diagnosis method based on improved polynomial adaptive chirp mode decomposition wavelet is proposed (IPACMD). Using Adaptive chirp mode decomposition, the amplitude and instantaneous frequency of multiple signal components are estimated; To avoid over-decomposition to generate spurious signal components, the similarity conditional entropy is used to optimize the adaptive chirp mode decomposition threshold ;The polynomial chirp transform (PCT) using a polynomial function instead of the linear chirp kernel in the chirp transform to improve the time-frequency aggregation of the instantaneous frequency curve of each signal component and output high-resolution time-frequency representation results. Compared with the original method, the proposed method has better time-frequency aggregation and is more effective for the analysis of variable speed planetary gearbox vibration signals. The simulation and experimental study results show that the method can effectively identify the frequency components and time-frequency characteristics of the variable-speed planetary gearbox vibration signal and realize the fault diagnosis of the planetary gearbox.

Methods of Hidden Periodicity Discovering for Gearbox Fault Detection

It is shown that the models of gear pair vibration, proposed in literature, are particular cases of the bi-periodically correlated random processes (BPCRPs), which describe its stochastic recurrence with two periods. The possibility of vibration and analysis within the framework of BPCRP approximation, in the form of periodically correlated random processes (PCRPs), is grounded and the implementation of vibration processing procedures using PCRP techniques, which are worked out by the authors, is given. Searching for hidden periodicities of the first and the second orders was considered as the main issue of this approach. The estimation of the non-stationary period (basic frequency) allowed us to carry out a detailed analysis of the deterministic part, the covariance structure of the stochastic part, and to form, using their parameters, the sensitive indicators for fault detection. The results of the processing of the wind turbine gearbox vibration signals are presented. The amplitude spectra of the deterministic oscillations and the time changes of the stochastic part power for different fault stages are analyzed. The most efficient indicators, which are formed using the amplitude spectra for practical applications, are proposed. The presented approach was compared with known in literature cyclostationary analysis and envelope techniques, and its advantages are shown.

Subway Gearbox Fault Diagnosis Algorithm Based on Adaptive Spline Impact Suppression

In the signal processing of real subway vehicles, impacts between wheelsets and rail joint gaps have significant negative effects on the spectrum. This introduces great difficulties for the fault diagnosis of gearboxes. To solve this problem, this paper proposes an adaptive time-domain signal segmentation method that envelopes the original signal using a cubic spline interpolation. The peak values of the rail joint gap impacts are extracted to realize the adaptive segmentation of gearbox fault signals when the vehicle was moving at a uniform speed. A long-time and unsteady signal affected by wheel–rail impacts is segmented into multiple short-term, steady-state signals, which can suppress the high amplitude of the shock response signal. Finally, on this basis, multiple short-term sample signals are analyzed by time- and frequency-domain analyses and compared with the nonfaulty results. The results showed that the method can efficiently suppress the high-amplitude components of subway gearbox vibration signals and effectively extract the characteristics of weak faults due to uniform wear of the gearbox in the time and frequency domains. This provides reference value for the gearbox fault diagnosis in engineering practice.

Fault severity detection of a worm gearbox based on several feature extraction methods through a developed condition monitoring system

This study presents the severity detection of pitting faults on worm gearbox through the assessment of fault features extracted from the gearbox vibration data. Fault severity assessment on worm gearbox is conducted by the developed condition monitoring instrument with observing not only traditional but also multidisciplinary features. It is well known that the sliding motion between the worm gear and wheel gear causes difficulties about fault detection on worm gearboxes. Therefore, continuous monitoring and observation of different types of fault features are very important, especially for worm gearboxes. Therefore, in this study, time-domain statistics, the features of evaluated vibration analysis method and Poincaré plot are examined for fault severity detection on worm gearbox. The most reliable features for fault detection on worm gearbox are determined via the parallel coordinate plot. The abnormality detection during worm gearbox operation with the developed system is performed successfully by means of a decision tree.