Gear Fault Diagnosis Using Synchro-Squeezing Transform Based Feature Analysis

Abstract

Synchro-squeezing transform has recently emerged as a powerful signal processing tool in non-stationary signal processing. Premised upon the concept of time-frequency (TF) reassignment, its basic objective is to provide a sharper representation of signals in the TF plane and extract the individual components of a non-stationary multi-component signal, akin to empirical mode decomposition (EMD). The rich mathematical structure based on continuous wavelet transform (CWT) makes synchro-squeezing powerful for gear fault diagnosis, as faulty gear signal is frequently constituted out of multiple amplitude-modulated and frequency-modulated signals embedded in noise. This work utilizes the decomposing power of synchro-squeezing transform to extract the IMFs from a gear signal followed by the application of standard gearbox condition indicators which promises greater prognostic power than that can be achieved by applying condition indictors directly to the inherently complex gear signals. The efficacy and the robustness of the algorithm are demonstrated with the aid of practical experimental data obtained from a helicopter gear box.