A gearbox fault diagnosis scheme based on near-field acoustic holography and spatial distribution features of sound field

Vibration signal analysis is the main technique in machine condition monitoring or fault diagnosis, whereas in some cases vibration-based diagnosis is restrained because of its contact measurement. Acoustic-based diagnosis (ABD) with non-contact measurement has received little attention, although sound field may contain abundant information related to fault pattern. A new scheme of ABD for gearbox based on near-field acoustic holography (NAH) and spatial distribution features of sound field is presented in this paper. It focuses on applying distribution information of sound field to gearbox fault diagnosis. A two-stage industrial helical gearbox is experimentally studied in a semi-anechoic chamber and a lab workshop, respectively. Firstly, multi-class faults (mild pitting, moderate pitting, severe pitting and tooth breakage) are simulated, respectively. Secondly, sound fields and corresponding acoustic images in different gearbox running conditions are obtained by fast Fourier transform (FFT) based NAH. Thirdly, by introducing texture analysis to fault diagnosis, spatial distribution features are extracted from acoustic images for capturing fault patterns underlying the sound field. Finally, the features are fed into multi-class support vector machine for fault pattern identification. The feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed scheme is demonstrated on the good experimental results and the comparison with traditional ABD method. Even with strong noise interference, spatial distribution features of sound field can reliably reveal the fault patterns of gearbox, and thus the satisfactory accuracy can be obtained. The combination of histogram features and gray level gradient co-occurrence matrix features is suggested for good diagnosis accuracy and low time cost.

► A new acoustic-based diagnosis scheme for gearbox fault is proposed.
► Spatial distribution features of sound field can effectively capture fault pattern.
► Effectiveness of the scheme is demonstrated on good experimental results.
► Even with strong noise interference, the satisfactory accuracy can be obtained.
► Combination of Hist and GLGCM is suggested for good accuracy and low time cost.