Optimising Sensor Location for an Enhanced Gearbox Condition Monitoring System

Abstract

Sensors location plays an important role in designing an effective condition monitoring system. Stability and reliability of information captured entirely depends on sensor location. The aim of this research is to investigate the relationship between sensor location and detecting the fault in a gearbox system. This paper proposes a methodology for locating indirect monitoring sensors such as acoustic emission and vibration on a gearbox system to obtain high quality information regarding the behaviour of machine conditions. Experimental work is designed to evaluate the optimum sensors' position for detecting faults in the gearbox system. The gearbox is operated under healthy and unhealthy conditions with varying levels of effective speed and load using full factorial experimental design method. The spectral kurtosis has been implemented as a sensory feature by computing the kurtosis for a range of frequency components in a time frequency diagram. The results from this study have shown that the implemented approach is a suitable method for providing a better understanding of acoustic emission and vibration signals to improve the reliability and the capability of condition motioning system.