Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940
DOI 10.1007/s00170-014-6313-6
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Experimental study of real gear transmission defects
using sound perception
Ramdane Younes & Nouredine Ouelaa &
Nacer Hamzaoui & Abderrazek Djebala
Received: 17 March 2014 / Accepted: 21 August 2014 / Published online: 9 September 2014
# Springer-Verlag London 2014
Abstract The aim of this paper is to study gear defects able to
appear on rotating machines using sound perception. To as-
similate a real gear defect, the experimental setup was left
operating under given load during several days.
Measurements have been taken each 2 h on the input and
output shafts. Acoustic sounds are performed using the pro-
cessing software DynamX V.7. These sounds are analyzed
with the paired comparison method to find a correlation
between the sound perception and the scalar indicators. The
results show that perception tests allowed classifying gear
defect sounds in degradation order. The correlation between
objective and subjective aspects highlights an important rela-
tionship between scalar indicators (kurtosis, crest factor, the
spectral center of gravity (SCG), and the root mean square
(RMS)) and the difference between gear sounds characterized
by the sounds distance in the proximity space. Vibratory
analysis is also performed to follow up the gear degradation
state and to confirm sound perception results obtained from
the proposed approach.
Keywords Real gear defect . Sound perception . Paired
comparison method . Fault detection
R. Younes (*) : N. Ouelaa : A. Djebala
Mechanics and Structures Laboratory, University of Guelma, B.P.
401, Guelma, Algeria
e-mail: ramdane_ys@yahoo.com
N. Hamzaoui
Laboratory of Vibration-Acoustics, INSA of Lyon, Bâtiment A. St.
Exupéry, 25 bis Avenue Jean Capelle, 69621 Villeurbanne Cedex,
France
1 Introduction
For many years, gears have been used as an efficiency mean of
power transmission in several industrial applications such as
gearboxes and power generators. The general performances of
these mechanisms have been improved, including their spe-
cific power, their life, and their load capacity. Indeed, besides
the advantage of high efficiency and good precision, this type
of mechanism leads, compared to the other transmission
mechanisms, to the weakest perturbation of the input-output
transmission law.
Vibration signals are the principle means of gear condition
monitoring as they provide the easiest method to gather and
reflect the basic excitation motion of gearbox [1, 2].
Additionally, noise signals, being closely correlated to vibra-
tion, have also been actively investigated for condition mon-
itoring and fault diagnosis of gearboxes in the last 2 decades
[3]. Nevertheless, both vibration and acoustic signals can be
contaminated by different background noises. For this reason,
specific analysis with more advanced tools should be carried
out to obtain reliable features for fault diagnosis. Developing
robust techniques for deterioration detection of gears subject-
ed to varying operation conditions becomes a serious issue
[4]. Numerous analysis techniques have been fully developed
and established over these last years for processing vibration
and acoustic signals to obtain diagnostic information about
progressively worsening gear faults.
As vibration and acoustic have the same generation mech-
anism, acoustic noise can also be used for machinery condi-
tion monitoring combined with effective signal processing
methods, such as the sound perception method. Perceptual
tests can be used to analyze various characteristics of the
sounds and discover the perceptive dimensions used by lis-
teners to differentiate these audio stimuli. These measures of
relative differences allow creating a similarity matrix per-
ceived between stimuli. From the similarity matrix, the
928
dimensions are revealed using the multidimensional scaling
(MDS) method [5], which allows representing the dissimilar-
ity perceived by listeners between stimuli in a multidimen-
sional space. Many research studies had for objective the
comparison of the listening tests [6].
The paired comparison method is principally recommend-
ed as a standard method to obtain directly the judgments of
dissimilarity between audio stimuli [7, 8]. Auditors should
assess the overall dissimilarity of pairs, referring for example
their estimate on a linear scale going from “very similar” to
“very dissimilar.” Individual dissimilarity matrices are filled
with auditor’s estimates and lead to an average matrix adapted
to the MDS.
Vincent [9] conducted a study concerning the sounds pro-
duced by the air-conditioning systems in an acoustic and
thermal interaction context. The test is in three stages: paired
comparison of preference, paired comparison of dissimilarity,
and evocative character questions. According to the test re-
sults, the first acoustic factor related to the dissimilarity be-
tween two sounds is the loudness, followed by indicators
related to the harmonic component such as, roughness, spec-
tral center gravity, and noise-to-harmonic ratio (NHR).
Parizet et al. [10] used binaural sound records in various
positions in high-speed train as stimuli in listening tests. The
study shows that the loudness is the first influencing factor of
interior noise perception in a high-speed train. Its influence is
quite the same for every listener, and it is mainly due to the
speed of the train. When the influence of loudness is elimi-
nated, perception is different among listeners. Most of them
(70 %) prefer low frequency range noise, while some other
listeners prefer the opposite.
Michaud et al. [11] studied a serious problem in the paired
comparison method; it is the important listening tests duration
when the number of stimuli is rather large, which lead to
auditive fatigue. The search for a test allowing the
evaluation of a great stimuli number leads adapting a
new method inspired from the visual perception carried
out by Rogowitz et al. [12]. In order to evaluate the
similarity on a wide panel of images, called comparison
with reference method, the task consists to assess the
similarity of a stimuli group compared to a reference.
This work is composed of two parts; the first is a judgment
simulation of sample listeners “perfect” that allows evaluating
the influence of several parameters such as the simulated
number of stimuli and listeners. In the second part, the authors
applied the method to the perceptive evaluation of loud-
speakers. To experimentally validate the proposed method,
two perceptive tests on the evaluation of loudspeakers were
carried out on two different panels already evaluated by
Lavandier et al. [13–15] with two other methods. Perceptual
results are compared to those obtained by Lavandier et al. This
comparison allows assessing and validating the use of the
“comparison with reference” method.
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940
Kanzari [16] carried out a vibro-acoustic analysis of sounds
resulting from gear tooth anomalies. From the obtained re-
sults, she established a correlation with the scalar indicators.
These results showed that the scalar indicators such as vibra-
tory speed, the spectral center of gravity, and the peak to peak
value well explain the preference judgments for gear sounds in
the rotating machines.
The main advantage of using acoustic condition monitor-
ing is that the acoustic signals can be acquired remotely,
avoiding safety hazards and eliminating the need for high
temperature vibration sensors with their associated mounting
difficulties. Acoustic condition monitoring of machinery,
however, has received very little attention. This is because
surrounding acoustics tends to contaminate the airborne sound
from nearby rotating machines. The influence of the acoustic
environment definitely plays an important part in condition
monitoring of machines, and these noise sources must be
filtered out using advanced signal processing techniques.
Also for surface vibration measurement, sensors are sensitive
to the direction of the vibration source, whereas for acoustic
measurement, the requirement for a microphone is that it
should be pointed toward the machine.
In the case of closed transmissions, the solid-borne noise is
the major component [17]. The vibration spectra produced by
gearboxes appear to be complicated, but they can generally be
broken down into tooth meshing harmonics, ghost compo-
nents, sidebands, low harmonics of the shaft speed, and inter-
modulation components. For a well-meshed set of gears, only
the fundamental gear meshing frequencies are likely to be
measured.
According to the bibliographical study presented below, we
found a great lack of the works concerning the fault detection
by sound perception. The objective of this work is the appli-
cation of the sound perception approach for the study and the
diagnosis of real gear defects. The proposed approach is a
hybrid method including the pair comparison method and the
MDS using individual differences scaling (INDSCAL) algo-
rithm. Section 2 is devoted to the theoretical study of the MDS
method. Section 3 contains the presentation of the experimen-
tal setup and the measurements chain. Vibratory results are
presented and discussed in Sect. 4. Finally, the results obtained
from perceptive tests with the proposed approach are present-
ed and discussed in Sect. 5.
2 MDS method
The multidimensional scaling method allows the representa-
tion of objects in a space starting from the proximity relation-
ship existing between each object couple. Each object can
then be represented in this space. There exist many algo-
rithms, starting from the distances between objects, that allow
determining the coordinates of these last in a space. Some of
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940
these algorithms allow taking into account specificities of the
various subjects or groups of subjects of the various stimuli,
even of both of them at the same time.
2.1 INDSCAL algorithm
The multidimensional scaling algorithms used in the literature
are EXSCAL [18], CLASCAL [19], CLASCAL expanded
[20], MDSCAL [21], and INDSCAL. In this article, the
INDSCAL algorithm is considered for the results processing.
Individual differences scaling (INDSCAL) algorithm was
proposed by Caroll and Chang [22] and allows, unlike
MDSCAL, to allot for each subject a different scale. Like
MDSCAL, it assumes that all the listeners use the same
dimensions but not with the same weighing. These weightings
appear in Eq. 1 in the form of Wkr factor representing the
weight which the listener k allots to perceptive dimension R of
perceptive space.
" # 12
XR
 2
d ij;k ¼ W kr X ir −X jr ð1Þ
r¼1
where dij,k is the distance between the objects i and j
according to subject k. Xjr and Xir are the coordinates of these
objects on the dimension R of the perceptual space.
3 Experimental setup
3.1 Test rig
In order to be closer with real gear defects, an experimental
setup has been designed in the vibration-acoustic laboratory of
the INSA of Lyon, France. The test rig contains two gear
transmissions normally lubricated. The first transmission con-
sists of a pinion of 42 teeth mounted in the input shaft and a
wheel of 50 teeth. The second transmission consists of a wheel
of 65 teeth and a pinion of 45 teeth mounted in the output
shaft. The test rig contains also a brake to simulate a variable
load as shown in Fig. 1.
3.2 Experiment conduct
To simulate real gear defects, the setup is left operating under
load during several days. Vibratory acceleration signals have
been measured on the input and output shafts each 2 h. When
transmissions are enclosed in a casing, like in the case of a
gearbox, the radiated noise is mainly due to the vibrations of
this one [17]; that is why we have used Dynae integral
electronic piezoelectric (IEPE) accelerometers with sensitivity
of 100 mV/g for signal acquisition. Vibration signals are then
929
Two gears
transmission
Variable Motor
speed drive
Brake
Accelerometer
Ball bearing
Fig. 1 Experimental setup
directly converted to acoustic sounds using the DynamX
software. These sounds are analyzed by sound perception
tests. Figure 2 represents the measurement scheme.
The following figures present photos of healthy gears
(Fig. 3a) and damaged gears (Fig. 3b).
4 Vibration analysis
4.1 Case without defect
Figure 4 shows the spectrum in the case of a gear without
defect. The meshing frequency Fe=615 Hz and its harmonics
2Fe=1,230 Hz and 3Fe=1,845 Hz clearly appear on the
spectrum. No modulations neither by the rotation frequencies
of the wheels or of the pinions appear, which explains the
absence of gear defect.
4.2 Case of a defect
The spectrum of Fig. 5 shows the presence of a generalized
gear tooth fault, which manifests by the appearance of side-
bands around the meshing frequency and its harmonics.
The zooms of Figs. 6 and 7 clearly show the modulation of
meshing frequency by two frequencies, 14.37 and 12.18 Hz,
corresponding to the rotation frequencies of the input and
intermediate shafts.
5 Sound perception tests
5.1 Stimuli
At the end of the experience, we visually noted the appearance
of a generalized wear on all the pinion teeth mounted on the
input and the intermediate shafts. This observation confirms
the vibratory analysis results reported previously.
930 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940

Fig. 2 Measurement scheme

Among the 46 measured sounds, a first selection based on a test. In the second selection, eight other sounds having the most
preliminary listening allowed selecting eight sounds as the most significant kurtosis values were selected. Note that the DynamX
different between them. They will be the subject of the listening software allows calculating several scalar indicators, in addition

Fig. 3 Gear photos a with defect

and b without defect a

b
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940 931

Fig. 4 Spectrum of the healthy

gear

to the kurtosis, such as crest factor (CF), spectral center of gravity
(SCG), and peak-to-peak.
After sound selection by the two raised methods, we started
listening tests for the eight selected sounds. The first selection
method, generally used in the works mentioned in the
bibliography, gives a correlation coefficient of R=0.90 (see
Fig. 8). The second selection method, which we proposed,
gives a much more correlation coefficient than the first selec-
tion method of R=0.95 (see Fig. 9). So, from now on, the
results of the second selection method are used.

Fig. 5 Spectrum of real gear

defect
932
Fig. 6 Zoom 1
5.2 Sounds restitution
The evaluation dissimilarity tests were carried out in an ordi-
nary room of the mechanics and structures laboratory (LMS)
of the University of Guelma, Algeria. The sound restitution
was done through stereo headphone. The restitution chain is
Fig. 7 Zoom 2
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940
composed of a PC with I5 Dell processor, tests interface under
MATLAB environment, and a Sennheiser HD201 headphone.
For calibration of listening test sounds, multiplying coeffi-
cients applied to the various samples of the audio signals were
determined. The purpose of this operation is to obtain the
same acoustic pressure level for all the sounds (89.6 dBA).
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940 933

R : 0.90425
1.2 5.4 Dissimilarity evaluation

1 The paired comparison test is often used to evaluate the

dissimilarities between the sound samples [23–27]. This sub-
0.8 jective test consists in diffusing on the listeners all the pairs of
reconstructed similarities

possible sound samples. In general, to limit the pair number to

0.6 be presented to the listeners, a random selection of the stimuli
presentation order is performed within each pair to cancel the
0.4 effect of the stimuli presentation order. Moreover, only a few
pairs of identical stimuli are integrated to ensure the consis-
0.2 tency of listeners’ responses. The total number of stimuli pairs
is n (n−1)/2 pairs of sounds, where n is the number of
0
conditions to be tested. In practice, each auditor listens to
two sounds of each pair many times as desired. Then, he
-0.2
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 (she) is asked to move a cursor between “identical” to the left
measured similarities and “very different” to the right depending on the degree of
Fig. 8 Diagram of dispersion between measured and reconstructed sim- dissimilarity between the perceived sounds. The cursor posi-
ilarities for the first selection tion for a pair of sounds is translated into a dissimilarity value
from 0 to 1. This step will take about 10 to 15 mn. Figure 11
For this, the level of each sound is measured by the B&K 2236 shows the comparison test interface such as it appears for the
type Sonometer. In Table 1, we present the acoustic pressure listener.
levels of the eight sounds and the multiplying coefficients that
must be applied to have the same pressure level.
5.5 Multidimensional analysis

5.3 Test interface and subjects
The interface of the tests is programmed in MATLAB lan-
guage; it contains two phases: The first is called training phase
in which the sounds are subjected to the listening of auditors.
Listeners can become familiar with the sounds of running test.
The second is a dissimilarity pair comparison phase. Twenty-
six listeners (11 women and 15 men), aged from 22 to
50 years, are taken to realize these two tests. Figure 10 repre-
sents the training phase.
R : 0.95319
1.2
The multidimensional scaling analysis is a technique used to
represent an ensemble of similarities between items as points
in a Euclidean space. In our case, the items are sounds, and the
proximity between the sounds is evaluated using dissimilarity
judgments. The principle of this analysis is to match the
measured dissimilarities between stimuli distances between
points representing these stimuli in a Euclidean space. The
dimensions of this space are continuous, i.e., all stimuli may
be classified according to these dimensions.
5.6 Dimension number determination

1 To determine the number of dimensions, we wish to construct

in a small dimension space r a point distribution reflecting
0.8 dissimilarities.
reconstructed similarities

For each sound S i , we associate a point X i of the

0.6
modelization space, and the distances between these points
0.4 are Euclidean distances dij,k (see Eq. 1) which are calculated
directly from the coordinates of Xi.
0.2 The optimal dimension number for representing the per-
ceptual space is determined from the error value in the dis-
0
similarity reconstruction in Euclidean distances. This error is
-0.2
determined by the stress value which is generally represented
by the dimension number as shown in Eq. 2 [28]:
-0.4 qXffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
 2ffi
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
measured similarities ði; jÞ∈Ω
δ ij;k −d ij;k
Stress ¼ qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
X ð2Þ
Fig. 9 Diagram of dispersion between measured and reconstructed sim- 2
ði; jÞ∈Ω
d ij;k
ilarities for the second selection
934 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940

Table 1 The acoustic pressure levels and multiplying coefficients

Sound 1 Sound 2 Sound 3 Sound 4 Sound 5 Sound 6 Sound 7 Sound 8

Pressure level (dBA) 85 85.6 85 86.2 87.2 89.6 88 88.4

Coefficient 1.05 1.04 1.05 1.03 1.02 1 1.01 1.013

with δij,k as the dissimilarity measures between sounds i
and j for subject k of the dissimilarity matrix that contains the
judgments of auditors. The multidimensional scaling methods
presented in this section are used when the experimenter has
no idea of the dimension number to be considered to represent
the perceptual space. In this case, the number of dimensions is
chosen by analyzing the error committed by the given value of
stress. In practice, the optimum number of dimensions is
determined when the adding of a dimension gives little addi-
tional information for the reconstruction of the distance ma-
trix. The stress curve in Fig. 12, which we obtained during our
tests, shows the emergence of a two-dimensional elbow, and
the two-dimensional solution was chosen.
5.7 Results analysis
We present in Table 2 the sound coordinates in a two-
dimension space (DIM1 and DIM2), where DIM1 represents
the evolution of the defect degradation and DIM2 represents
the difference in severity of each sound compared to other
sounds, according to the paired comparison test (see Fig. 10).
One notes that the coordinate results are in perfect agreement
with the chronology of the sounds collected, starting from
sound 1 (S1) corresponding to the case without defect until
sound 8 (S8) corresponding to the more degraded gear.
5.7.1 Calculation of dissimilarities between subjects:
correlation coefficient
The differences between subjects are calculated from their
responses on different pair stimuli. The adopted dissimilarity
measurement depends on the response nature.
The dissimilarity between the two subjects k and l is
defined as follows [29]:
d 1 ðk; l Þ ¼ 1−rðk; l Þ ð3Þ
where r(k, l) is the linear correlation coefficient of Bravais-
Pearson [30] between the notes of dissimilarity pronounced by
the subject k and those pronounced by the subject l.
The similarity score given by Bravais-Pearson coefficient
is R=0.95 (see Fig. 9), which confirms good dissimilarity
restitution.
5.7.2 Proximity space
Despite the low wear that appeared on the tested gear teeth,
perception tests allowed to classify the sounds in degradation
order from the least degraded sound (S1) to the most degraded

Fig. 10 Training phase interface

Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940 935

Fig. 11 Paired comparison

interface test

sound (S8) (see Fig. 13). S1 is measured at the test beginning
(healthy teeth case), S2 is measured after approximately 4
operating hours, and then S3 is measured at the end of the
first day. The listeners classified the three sounds in the first
quarter of the sound proximity space, corresponding to similar
sounds (close severity). Sounds S4, S5, and S6 are measured
during the second day of operation at different time intervals.
Listeners have classified S4 in the second quarter of proximity
space. The shock caused by the tooth degradation is perceived
by the listeners and confirmed by kurtosis values, which
passes from 6.6 for S3 to 9.6 for S4 (see Fig. 14). For S5
and S6, the tooth degradation becomes more important (wear
Measure of stress factor
0.7
0.6
0.5
phenomenon thus low kurtosis [31]); the listeners classified
these two sounds in the third quarter of the proximity space
corresponding to sounds different to the initial state S1.
Finally, the sounds S7 and S8, measured during the third
day, are classified in the fourth quarter of the proximity space
corresponding to sounds very different compared to S1.
Monitoring the fault progress by objective parameters such
as scalar and spectral indicators is very sensitive to the shape
of the signal. If this latter is very noisy, indicators become
insensitive and require the use of more advanced signal pro-
cessing tools to access the information. In the proposed meth-
od, one based on a large number of listeners to classify
subjectively sounds from the less degraded to the most de-
graded. The taking into account of nonlinearity effect of
human perception in the sounds’ perception test gives an
effective diagnosis of the fault progression evolution (see

Table 2 Sound coordi-

0.4 nates in two-dimension Sounds DIM1 DIM2
perceptual space
0.3 S1 −0.333 0.127
S2 −0.279 0.047
0.2 S3 −0.171 0.029
S4 −0.128 −0.244
0.1 S5 0.181 −0.256
S6 0.201 −0.159
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 S7 0.327 0.122
Dimensions nombre of the MDS
S8 0.202 0.333
Fig. 12 Measure of stress factor
936 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940

Fig. 13 Perceptual space 0.4

S8
0.3

0.2

S1 S7

Dimension 2
0.1
S2
S3
0

-0.1

S6
-0.2
S4 S5
-0.3
-0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
Dimension 1

values of DIM1 in Table 2). Whereas objective parameters To this end, we conducted an ascending linear regression,
used in this work such as the kurtosis gives correct results until having for entry the vibratory indicators. Selected dimension
signal S4, beyond, the values of kurtosis become unrepresen- will be that which presents the best score of similarity, so a
tative of the fault degradation state; see Fig. 14. better alignment of clouds points on the regression line.

In Fig. 15, this correlation is done for dimension1 (DIM1)

5.7.3 Correlations between scalar indicators and dimensions
Since these dimensions perfectly describe the sound disper-
sion in the proximity space, and in order to relate the vibration
indicators to acoustic perception, we look for a correlation
between this dispersion and the calculated scalar indicators:
kurtosis (K), crest factor (CF), spectral center of gravity
(SCG), root mean square (RMS), peak-to-peak, overall level
(OL), the peak value, and the K-factor. So, the dimensions of
this space will be a linear function of different indicators.
with one physical parameter. In this case, it is the SCG which
best characterizes dimension1, with a correlation factor of R2 =
0.906. The obtained linear combination is given by
Dim1 ¼ 0:22934  SCG−0:306
Figure 16 shows the correlation made for dimension1
(DIM1) with two physical parameters. The kurtosis and the
crest factor best characterize the dimension1, with a correla-
tion factor of R2 =0.957. The obtained linear combination is
given by

Dim1 ¼ 0:078235  K−0:30245  CF þ 1:9159

Kurtosis Kurtosis

10 The correlation done for dimension2 (DIM2) with one phys-

9 ical parameter (see Fig. 17) shows that the overall level (OL) best
8
characterizes this dimension, with a correlation factor of R2 =
7
6
0.933. The obtained linear combination is given by
5
Dim2 ¼ −0:42629  OL þ 0:39661
4
3
2
1
Finally, Fig. 18 presents the correlation made for
0 dimension2 (DIM2) with two physical parameters. The
S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8 SCG and the RMS best characterize this dimension,
Fig. 14 Kurtosis of the eight sounds with a correlation factor of R 2 = 0.96. The obtained
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940 937

Fig. 15 Diagram of dispersion 0.4

between the first dimension and Measures
the scalar indicators 0.3 Dim1 = 0.0022934 x SCG + -0.306 with R 2 = 0.90644

0.2

DIM1 obtained by listening test

0.1

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4
-0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3
DIM1 calculated by Mathématécal model

linear combination is given by
Dim2 ¼ 0:34635  SCG−0:25857  RMS þ 0:51238
Actually, in the literature, rare are works using sound percep-
tion for the diagnosis of gear defects. However, one finds the
work of Hamzaoui [32] that uses this technique to diagnose
simulated gear defects. In this study, the author uses the listening
to select sounds that are the subject of the paired comparison test.
In our study, the choice of sounds is based on the scalar indicator
“kurtosis” that is a good indicator of the shock presence. The
comparison of the obtained results with those of reference [32]
shows that in this latter, the correlation of DIM2 (which repre-
sents the difference of gravity of each sound compared to the
other sounds, according to the paired comparison test) with scalar
indicators gives a correlation coefficient of R2 =0.87, whereas in
our study, it was found equal to R2 =0.96. This result well reflects
the dispersion of sound in the perception space (see Fig. 13
where the sounds are grouped according to the degree of degra-
dation for the 3 days of sounds recording), contrary to the results
of the study of Hamzaoui [32] (see Fig. 19, where the sounds

Fig. 16 Diagram of dispersion 0.4

between the first dimension and Measures
the scalar indicators Dim1 = 0.078235 x K + -0.30245 x CF + 1.9159 with R 2 = 0.95776
0.3

0.2
DIM1 obtained by listening test

0.1

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3

-0.4
-0.4 -0.3 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3
DIM1 calculated by Mathematical model
938 Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940

Fig. 17 Diagram of dispersion

between the second dimension 0.3 Measures
and the scalar indicators Dim2 = -0.42629 x OL 2
+ 0.39661 avec R = 0.93542

0.2

DIM2 obtained by listening test

0.1

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3
-0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3
DIM2 calculated by Mathematical model

corresponding to simple, double, and triple defects in the percep- S7 Much accentuated defect on the second pinion and ac-
tion space are more or less mixed). centuated defect on the third pinion
S8 Much accentuated defect on the second pinion and ac-
With centuated defect on the third pinion

S1 New machine 6 Conclusion

S2 Accentuated defect on the second pinion
S3 Much accentuated defect on the second pinion The objective of this article is the application of the sound
S4 Accentuated defect on the third pinion perception approach in the study and the detection of teeth
S5 Much accentuated defect on the third pinion gear defects. First, vibratory analysis is carried out to follow
S6 Much accentuated defect on the second pinion and mod- up the degradation state of the tested gears. Perceptual study
erate defect on the third pinion based on the paired comparison and the MDS methods is

Fig. 18 Diagram of dispersion

between the second dimension 0.3 Measures
and the scalar indicators Dim2 =0.34635 x SCG + -0.25857 x RMS + 0.51238 with R 2 = 0.96584

0.2
DIM2 obtained by listening test

0.1

-0.1

-0.2

-0.3
-0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3
DIM2 calculated by Mathematical model
Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2015) 76:927–940
Fig. 19 Perceptual space [32]
carried out to study the gear’s sounds for different degradation
levels. This study allowed the identification of the vibration
parameters for establishing a vibro-acoustic relationship in
rotating machinery, namely, gear transmission.
The obtained results in this work showed that
– The proposed sound selection method, based on the kur-
tosis values, gives more important correlation coefficient
than those obtained by listening methods mentioned in
the literature.
– Perception tests allowed classifying the sounds in degra-
dation order from the least degraded sound (S1) to the
most degraded sound (S8).
– The correlations between the objective and subjective
aspects helped to highlight the important relationship
between the vibration indicators and the distances be-
tween gear sounds in proximity space.
– Scalar indicators, kurtosis, crest factor, the SCG, and the
RMS factors, best explain the preference judgments for
the gear’s sounds in the case of a real defect.
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