Time–frequency demodulation analysis based on iterative generalized demodulation for fault diagnosis of planetary gearbox under nonstationary conditions

• The proposed method has fine time–frequency resolution and is free from cross term interferences.
• It avoids the complex time-varying sidebands analysis of planetary gearbox signals.
• It is effective in extracting the time-varying gear fault characteristic frequencies.
• It is effective in diagnosing both the local and distributed gear faults.

The vibration signal of planetary gearboxes exhibits the characteristics of both amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM), and thus has a complex sideband structure. Time-varying speed and/or load will result in time variant characteristic frequency components. Since the modulating frequency is related to the gear fault characteristic frequency, the AM and FM parts each alone contains the information of the gear fault. We propose a time–frequency amplitude and frequency demodulation analysis metbhod to avoid the complex time-variant sideband analysis, and thereby identify the time-variant gear fault characteristic frequency. We enhance the time–frequency analysis via iterative generalized demodulation (IGD). The time-varying amplitude and frequency demodulated spectra have fine time–frequency resolution and are free of cross term interferences. They do not involve complex time-variant sidebands, thus considerably facilitating fault diagnosis of planetary gearboxes under nonstationary conditions. The method is validated using both numerically simulated data and experimental signals.