MONITORING FATIGUE CRACKS IN GEARS

Vibration analysis is the most common means of gear monitoring and diagnostics. Gear vibration is affected by faults but the signal is usually picked up at the case, where it is also affected by the structural response. An appropriate filtering function is therefore proposed to recover the torsional gear vibration from the case vibration signal. The restored gear vibration can then be used with greater confidence than case vibration both for particular diagnostics purposes like crack detection and for more general objectives. This technique and its possible advantages in fatigue crack detection are illustrated in the paper.