Analysis and Condition Monitoring of Gear Boxes

Preparations for Measurement :

1) Get technical data of gear box (number of teeth on each gear wheel)

2) Get information about operation of gear box (speed, load)

3) Use accelerometer for vibration measurement, installed on bearing

4) Use FFT - analyzer with high resolution (i.e. VT-60)

5) Do spectrum measurement in acceleration up to 4 x gearmesh frequency

6) Do measurement with load (not idle)

7) Do averaging (at least 3 times) to avoid (reduce) transients

Gearbox Analysis / Folie 1 SCHENCK TREBEL CORP.

 Analysis and Condition Monitoring of Gear Boxes

1) Example

You need drawing, number of teeth of each wheel and service speed !

Driven shaft with speed n1

(i.e. 1800 cpm = 30 Hz)
(i.e. 60 teeth)
Gear mesh frequency
of first stage GMF1
(i.e. 60 teeth x 30 Hz = 1.8kHz)
Intermediate shaft with speed n2
(i.e. 3600 cpm = 60 Hz)
(i.e. 30 teeth and 45 teeth)
Drive shaft with speed n3
(i.e. 6000 cpm = 100 Hz)
(i.e. 27 teeth)
Gear mesh frequency
of second stage GMF2
(i.e. 45 teeth x 60 Hz = 2.7 kHz)

Gearbox Analysis / Folie 2 SCHENCK TREBEL CORP.

 Analysis and Condition Monitoring of Gear Boxes
Interpretation of Measurement :

1) Good gear box should have all above mentioned frequencies

2) Good gear box should not have noticeable sidebands

Amplitude
g

GMF1
GMF2

n2
n1 n3
Frequency

Gearbox Analysis / Folie 3 SCHENCK TREBEL CORP.

 Analysis and Condition Monitoring of Gear Boxes
Interpretation of Measurement :

1) Damaged gear box have significant sidebands around

gear mesh frequencies and their harmonics

2) Each damaged gear wheel generates a family of sidebands

3) Modulation frequency ( = distance between sidebands)

indicates which gear wheel is damaged

4) Each damaged gear wheel generates a family of sidebands

5) Use Cepstrum to separate the different families of sidebands

Gearbox Analysis / Folie 4 SCHENCK TREBEL CORP.

 Analysis and Condition Monitoring of Gear Boxes

Transformation from Time Signature to Spectrum to Cepstrum

-1
Vibration F V (dB) F V
100 28,1 ms (35 Hz)
raw
95,9 ms (10 Hz)
90

80 bad
time
70
s
100 200 300 400 500 0,1 0,2 0,3
Hz
100
decomposition
90

80
good
70

spectrum 100 200 300 400 500 Hz 0,1 0,2 0,3 s

signal t
frequency quefrency

Gearbox Analysis / Folie 5 SCHENCK TREBEL CORP.