Phenomenological models of vibration signals for condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of epicyclic gearboxes

Condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of epicyclic gearboxes using vibration signals are not as straightforward as that of fixed-axis gearboxes since epicyclic gearboxes behave quite differently from fixed-axis gearboxes in many aspects, like spectral structures. Aiming to present the spectral structures of vibration signals of epicyclic gearboxes, phenomenological models of vibration signals of epicyclic gearboxes are developed by algebraic equations and spectral structures of these models are deduced using Fourier series analysis. In the phenomenological models, all the possible vibration transfer paths from gear meshing points to a fixed transducer and the effects of angular shifts of planet gears on the spectral structures are considered. Accordingly, time-varying vibration transfer paths from sun-planet/ring-planet gear meshing points to the fixed transducer due to carrier rotation are given by window functions with different amplitudes. And an angular shift in one planet gear position is introduced in the process of modeling. After the theoretical derivations, three experiments are conducted on an epicyclic gearbox test rig and the spectral structures of collected vibration signals are analyzed. As a result, the effects of angular shifts of planet gears are verified, and the phenomenological models of vibration signals when a local fault occurs on the sun gear and the planet gear are validated, respectively. The experiment results demonstrate that the established phenomenological models in this paper are helpful to the condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of epicyclic gearboxes.