Crack detection of a modified high contact ratio gear

Abstract

For the purpose of vibration-based fault detection and to avoid gear failure consequences it is necessary to investigate the possibility of early fault detection. A reduction in the gear time-varying mesh stiffness (TVMS) due to the existence of a crack can be used to detect and evaluate tooth damage. The reduction in TVMS has an impact on the system’s dynamic response signal, and then the used fault detection indicators are affected. The current article sheds light on the fault detection possibility of high contact ratio (HCR) gears as compared to those standard ones of low contact ratio (LCR). The influence of modifying the gear tooth addendum dimension for obtaining a high contact ratio on the possibility of early fault detection is studied. Twenty different crack cases are examined by using both the LCR and HCR design cases. For every crack case, the mesh stiffness is evaluated and introduced to the used gear dynamic model for obtaining the system’s dynamic response. The TVMS evaluation is presented for both the LCR and HCR gear cases. Four fault detection indicators, namely the RMS, kurtosis, peak value and crest factor are applied as different measures to enhance the research outcome. The results show that the studied indicators will have less increase when the crack size increases in the HCR design than in the LCR one. Therefore, the HCR design will be less sensitive or more difficult to detect from the fault detection perspective. Lowering the amount of signal noise is applied to the HCR case to examine the impact on enhancing the obtained indicators. The four applied indicators show different behaviours with reducing noise.