Fault detection of planetary gearboxes using new diagnostic parameters

Planetary gearboxes are commonly used in modern industry because of their large transmission ratio and strong load-bearing capacity. They generally work under heavy load and tough working environment and therefore their key components including sun gear, planet gears, ring gear, etc are subject to severe pitting and fatigue crack. Planetary gearboxes significantly differ from fixed-axis gearboxes and exhibit unique behavior, which invalidates the use of the diagnostic parameters developed and suitable for fixed-axis gearboxes. Therefore, there is a need to develop parameters specifically for detecting and diagnosing faults of planetary gearboxes. In this study, two diagnostic parameters are proposed based on the examination of the vibration characteristics of planetary gearboxes in both time and frequency domains. One is the root mean square of the filtered signal (FRMS) and the other is the normalized summation of positive amplitudes of the difference spectrum between the unknown signal and the healthy signal (NSDS). To test the proposed diagnostic parameters, we conducted experiments on a planetary gearbox test rig with sun gear faults including a cracked tooth and a pitted tooth. The vibration signals were measured under different motor speeds. The proposed parameters are compared with the existing parameters reported in the literature. The comparison results show the proposed diagnostic parameters perform better than others.