Dynamic modeling of gearbox faults: A review

•Gear mesh stiffness evaluation methods are reviewed.•Gearbox damage modeling and fault diagnosis techniques are reviewed.•Gearbox transmission path modeling is reviewed.•Validation techniques are reviewed.•Research prospects are suggested.

Gearbox is widely used in industrial and military applications. Due to high service load, harsh operating conditions or inevitable fatigue, faults may develop in gears. If the gear faults cannot be detected early, the health will continue to degrade, perhaps causing heavy economic loss or even catastrophe. Early fault detection and diagnosis allows properly scheduled shutdowns to prevent catastrophic failure and consequently result in a safer operation and higher cost reduction. Recently, many studies have been done to develop gearbox dynamic models with faults aiming to understand gear fault generation mechanism and then develop effective fault detection and diagnosis methods. This paper focuses on dynamics based gearbox fault modeling, detection and diagnosis. State-of-art and challenges are reviewed and discussed. This detailed literature review limits research results to the following fundamental yet key aspects: gear mesh stiffness evaluation, gearbox damage modeling and fault diagnosis techniques, gearbox transmission path modeling and method validation. In the end, a summary and some research prospects are presented.