Vibration-based gear wear area monitoring for quantitative assessment of wear severity under variable speed conditions

• Published in: Mechanical systems and signal processing 2025-02, Vol.224, Article 112213
• Main Authors: Gao, Jiahao, Wang, Youren
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Condition monitoring; Gears; Variable speed conditions; Wear area
• ISSN: 0888-3270
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ymssp.2024.112213

Gear wear is an inevitable consequence of friction and load during operation. However, the nonlinear and non-stationary nature of the vibration signals under variable speed conditions and their complex interaction with gear wear make it extremely challenging to extract wear-related features from them. Since the gear wear area visually indicates the severity of wear under varying speed conditions, we propose a vibration-based method for monitoring the wear area to quantify wear severity. First, non-stationary vibration signals are resampled in the angular domain using the multisynchronous extraction transform to mitigate the impact of rotational speed variations. Then, vibration components related to gear wear are extracted using the adaptive local synchronization fitting technique. Subsequently, a novel indicator, termed the cumulative comprehensive energy ratio, is constructed by integrating the gear’s multidimensional characteristics to monitor the wear area and visually assess wear severity. Finally, the relationships between the constructed indicator and the percentage of gear wear area under six different speed conditions are investigated on the CL-100 gear contact fatigue test rig. The results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively quantifies wear severity under variable speed conditions.