Gearbox Fault Diagnostics using AE Sensors with Low Sampling Rate
Yongzhi Qu1, Brandon Van Hecke1, David He1, Jae Yoon1,
Eric Bechhoefer2 and Junda Zhu2
1
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago,
Chicago, IL 60607, 2 Green Power Monitoring Systems, LLC, Essex Junction, VT 05452,
3
Renewable NRG Systems, Hinesburg, VT 05461
Abstract
Acoustic Emission (AE) sensors have been investigated as a potential tool for machinery
health monitoring and fault diagnostics. While AE sensors could possibly provide higher fault
detection sensitivity compared with vibration sensors, they also have some drawbacks. AE
sensors generally output signals in the range of several hundred kHz up to several MHz, making
the AE data sampling and processing costly. In this paper, a method on gearbox fault diagnosis
using AE sensors with a low sampling rate is presented. In the presented method, a heterodynebased frequency reduction technique is employed to demodulate the AE signals and shift signal
frequencies to a low range. The AE signals are sampled at a rate as low as 20 kHz, which istypically used for vibration signals sampling in industrial applications. Time synchronous
average signals are computed from AE signals sampled at the low rate and used to computecondition indicators for gear fault diagnosis. The diagnostic performance of the conditionindictors computed using both AE and vibration data sampled at the same rate of 20 kHz iscompared. Both AE and vibration data is collected on a notational split torque gearbox withdifferent levels of seeded tooth faults. The results have shown that AE signals sampled at a low
rate suffice for fault detection purpose and are promising for damage level diagnosis. Comparedwith vibration analysis results, AE provides better fault diagnosis sensitivity to tooth damagelevel. Since AE is normally unaffected by the machine resonance, it can potentially offer morestable and reliable performance under the same sampling condition as vibration.
Keywords: Gearbox; fault diagnostics; acoustic emission sensor; vibration sensor
1. Introduction
Acoustic emission (AE) is defined as transient elastic waves within a material caused bydeformation and the release of localized strain energy [1]. When an unknown fault starts to formin the machinery, energy loss actions such as impacts, friction, and crushing generate soundwave activity that spans a broad range of frequencies [2]. AE signals are not affected relatively
by structural resonance and could be more sensitive to early fault activities [3]. AE sensors
could catch frequencies that are much higher than those in vibration signals and therefore theiruse enables the technicians to detect inchoate faults before any damage occurs. Also, by
quantitative methods, one could monitor the fault evolution process from the very beginning.
Compared with vibration signals, AE signals have the potential to detect small abnormal friction,
initial cracking, and so on. There are some possible explanations for this. The first one, as
discussed above, is that AE emitted by very small defects occurs in frequency ranges that are
higher than the operational ranges of vibration sensors and therefore might not be caught byvibration sensors. The second explanation is that when there is only a small crack or surface
wear in the machinery, it is not severe enough to change the structural vibration. The vibration
signals, which measure the second derivative of the displacement, may still remain the same, andthus unable to detect the incipient fault.
J. Acoustic Emission, 31 (2013)67© 2013 Acoustic Emission Group	
  Even though AE has been studied as a potential tool for machine fault diagnosis for sometime, the source and characteristics of AE signals, especially in machine fault detection, cannot
be fully understood. Initially, burst-type AE signals were used for fault detection in structural
health monitoring. The AE bursts are believed to be fault related. While this might hold aground truth for static structural fault detection, it has never been proved for rotating machines.
For bearings, it has been proposed that asperity contact was the primary sources of AE signals[4]. For gears, no similar study has been performed systematically yet. The relationshipbetween AE signals and asperity contact under elastohydrodynamic lubrication regime has beenstudied, which is synonymous with gears [5, 6]. The authors in [5] and [6] identified asperity
contact as a significant source of AE signals but did not investigate other sources in detail, suchas the gear dynamics, backlash and so on. It is generally accepted that an increase in meshingstress would generate larger amplitude AE responses [7]. In this paper, AE signals are
postulated to be mostly related to the interaction and impact of teeth during tooth meshing. The
impact on the surface of the tooth causes material deformation and is followed by the strainenergy release, which will then cause transient elastic waves.
Many studies on AE and vibration based gear fault detection have been reported. Ogbonnah[8] applied a wavelet analysis method to gear fault diagnosis and prognosis using AE sensors. A
linear relationship between AE amplitude, gearbox running time, and pit progression has been
established in the study. It has been shown that the wavelet analysis method offers good
prognosis for the pitting progression as well as the pitting rate. In an early study which applied
AE technique to the analysis of fatigue crack growth in a carburized gear tooth [9], AE energy
rate was found to be proportional to the stress intensity factor range and crack growth rate.
Another comparative study using AE, vibration, and spectrometric oil samples for spur gear
pitting fault detection was reported in [3]. As an experimental study, it was found that based on
the raw signal root mean square (RMS) levels, the AE technique was more sensitive for fault
detection purpose. However, in their experiments, the AE sensors were attached directly on thefaulty gear inside the gearbox, which is infeasible for most of real applications. Baydar and Ball[10] used the smoothed pseudo-Wigner–Ville distribution to compare the results from acoustic
signals and vibration signals. They simulated three types of progressing local faults: broken tooth,gear crack, and localized wear. Their results suggested that acoustic signals are more effective
for the early detection of faults and may provide a powerful tool to indicate the various types ofprogressing faults in gearboxes. However, the acoustic signals presented in their paper werecollected by a microphone, which were not exactly AE signals. AE signal is the elastic stresswave generated inside a solid material, typically metal, due to energy release. Acoustic signal
refers to the sound signal, which reaches in the air and can be collected by a microphone. AE
signal is different from acoustic signal that generally lies in the audible range (20 Hz ~ 20 kHz),
while AE frequency lies in the high frequency range (30 kHz ~ 1 MHz).
Used as a ground reference, reliable AE signals of healthy cases have been acquired by many
researchers as an important pre-requisite for the success of AE-based fault detection. In a recent
study on wind turbine condition-based monitoring, a design of a new continuous condition
monitoring system with automated warnings based on a combination of vibrational and AE
analysis was reported in [11]. The authors tried to determine a ground reference for the healthy
turbine. The vibrational and AE signatures for a healthy wind turbine gearbox and generator
were obtained as a function of wind speed and turbine power. They listed a number oflimitations in current research of AE on rolling elements diagnostics. First of all, themeasurement are mostly performed in laboratory test rig other than field service conditions.
Second, the signal to noise ratio is low due to short time data collection. Third, classification68	
  algorithms such as pattern recognition could possible cancel the coherent elements of the noise
but not the random or quasi-random components. Thus, they proposed that in order to address
the above limitations, it is needed for future AE work using much longer monitoring times andrepeated measurement on actual defect rolling elements in service to compensate the random
noise and instrument performance error. In another AE-based gear fault diagnosis paper [12], anenergy-based condition indicator was introduced for monitoring and diagnosis for any machine
operating conditions in spite of speed and load variations. A feature called energy index was
proposed to measure the statistical relative energy levels of segments in a time domain signal
over a cycle. The proposed technique was validated by comparison with some of the existing
methods using the same AE data for early fault detection. The proposed method was also tested
with vibration data. When applied to AE signals, it was able to effectively detect the early fault.
However, in their research, AE signals were sampled at a high rate of 1 MHz, which hinderedthem from doing time synchronous averaging due to the large data volume. They used analternative method of plotting the result of each revolution together to get a visual data graph ofthe results. Also, their work was aimed to evaluate AE and vibration for fault detection purpose
other than fault level diagnostics.
Gao et al. [13] proposed a wavelet transform based method to analyze AE signals, which
could act as a supplement redundant method for vibration test. As reported in [14], a data
mining based method was developed to classify the condition indicators derived from AE burst
data to detect bearing faults. In [15], an empirical mode decomposition (EMD)-based AE feature
quantification method was introduced. This paper reported successful detection of gear faults
using AE burst data sampled at a rate as low as 500 kHz. In [16], a supervised learning process
was developed after EMD decomposition for bearing fault detection using AE signals. In gearand bearing fault diagnosis, research has reported that AE sensor is more sensitive to early faults
than vibration sensors. For gears, Tandon and Mata [17] applied AE to spur gears test rig with
jet oil lubrication system to investigate the detectability gear pitting damages. Simulated pitting
has constant depth (500 µm) but variable diameter (250/350/450/550/1100 and 2200 µm). Theirinvestigation has shown the advantage of AE over vibration for early detection of defects ingears by observing that the AE data displayed a sharp increase in the parameters when the defectsize was around 500 µm while vibration data displayed a comparable increase when the defectsize was more than 1000 µm. Scheer et al. [18] have shown that AE is effective to capture earlystage of gear faults (e.g. tooth edge fracture and pitting) before they grow to change theirvibration behavior. For bearings, Yoshioka and Fujiwara [19, 20] have shown that AE
parameters were able to identify bearing defects before their appearance in the vibration range.
This led to an investigation that used the AE technique for the detection of subsurface cracks
resulting from rolling contact fatigue [21]. The method provided the ability to determine theposition of sub-surface fatigue cracks by relating the crack positions to the location of the AE
signal source. The conclusions of in [19, 20] were later validated by Hawman and Galinaitisin[22] in a study that also made the observation that AE techniques are able to detect bearing faults
earlier than vibration analysis methods. In a study by Eftekharnejad et al. [23] in comparing theapplicability of AE and vibration technologies for the monitoring of rolling bearing degradation,
it was shown that AE was more sensitive for incipient fault detection when compared tovibration.
There are still some issues in the reviewed methods. First, the AE data was collected at very
high sampling frequency, typically 2~5 MHz. Second, these methods tried to detect the gear
faults using data-driven approach rather than physics-based approach. Data-driven approaches
normally rely on complicated computation algorithms such as EMD and wavelet analysis to69	  compute the AE features. In general, AE based techniques require much higher sampling rate
than vibration analysis based techniques for gearbox fault diagnosis. In a recent paper, Qu et al.
[24] proposed a new AE-based gearbox fault diagnostic approach. Their proposed approachcombines a heterodyne-based frequency reduction technique with time synchronous average(TSA) and spectral kurtosis (SK) to collect AE signals with a sampling rate that is comparable tothat of vibration sensors, process AE sensor signals, and extract features as condition indictors
for gearbox fault detection. They have showed that the proposed AE sensor-based approachgave good gear fault diagnostic results. In [24], a sampling rate of 100 kHz was chosen to
sample AE signals. This sampling rate is considered higher than normal vibration sampling rate
in industrial applications. In order to evaluate whether the AE sampling rate could be further
reduced for effective fault diagnosis while maintaining acceptable performance compared withvibration signals, this paper presents a comparative study for gearbox tooth damage level
diagnosis using AE and vibration measurements under a low sampling rate of 20 kHz. A
sampling rate of 20 kHz is the typical sampling rate in industry for vibration data collection. It ischosen to evaluate the AE-based diagnosis technique. The performance of the AE-based
technique is compared with that of the vibration-based approach using the same sampling rate of
20 kHz. One key issue in heterodyne-based frequency reduction technique applied to AE signals
is to choose the right frequency of the reference signal. In this paper, an optimization procedure
is used to determine the optimal frequency of the reference signal. Note that
2. Gear Mechanics Background: Backlash, Contact Ratio, and Tooth Cut
Gear conjugating involves several kinds of stresses, among which two basic stresses are:contact stress and root bending stress [25, 26]. Excessive contact stress causes surface
pitting/wear, while the root bending stress causes tooth breakage or tooth root crack. The
process of gear mating is complex. Numerous papers studied the numerical models andperformed extensive experiments to identify the dominant cause of gear noise. The major factors
contributing to the gear noise include tooth stiffness, manufacture error, tooth profile, backlash,asperity ratio, and so on. These factors determine the smoothness of the gear meshing andtherefore cause the vibration and AE signals.
When the gear faults occur as gear tooth cuts, backlash and contact ratio are major factorsthat affect sensor measurement. These two factors will be the primary concern of this paper.
Backlash, in the context of gears and gear trains, is the amount of clearance between mated gear
teeth. It is the gap that can be seen when the direction of movement is reversed and the slack orlost motion is taken up before the reversal of motion is complete. The presence of backslash has
a significant effect on impact dynamics of meshing gear teeth-pair. Backlash is one of the mostcommon phenomenon found in any geared systems. Backlash is essential for the geartransmission in the sense that too little backlash may result in interference between the teeth
while excessive backlash would cause looseness during gear mating. Generally, the greatertransmission accuracy required, the smaller backlash needed. The presence of excessive
backlash could result in larger impact energy than normal. The initial contact can be modeled as
an impact phenomenon when backlash exists between mating gears. Gear impact is generally
approximated by a linear model although some limitations have already been established for themodel [27].
Several recent studies on gear mechanics regarding backlash would be briefly reviewed here.
De La Cruz and Rahnejat [28] described a model based on classic Hertzian impact for gear
mating under medium to heavy load. They modeled the instantaneous geometry of the contact70	
  and prevailing kinematics of contiguous surface for helical teeth pairs. In paper [29], dynamic
responses of a gear pair system with periodic stiffness characteristics and backlash wereanalyzed. The study provided an explanation for intermittent chaos and other complicateddynamic behaviors observed in previous experimental studies. Impact-induced vibration
analysis was performed theoretically and experimentally in [30]. The results showed that remote
impact of meshing transmission teeth through backlash induced high frequency components indrivetrain vibrational response.
Tuma [31] gave an overall review on the practical techniques and procedures employed toremove noise from gearboxes and transmission units. The paper concluded that sufficiently rigid
housing, shafts and gears, and high contact ratio gears are important to reduce gearbox noise. As
reported in [27], vibration analysis could be used to establish a backlash model. Disturbancessuch as impacts, rolling, sliding, and friction, produce elastic deformations, which absorb theenergy during gear meshing. The elastic deformation causes elastic waves, which transmit theenergy from the gear to the gear housing. The typical propagation path of the elastic waves tothe sensors mounted on the gear house is gears, shaft, bearing, and housing [32]. The elastic
waves released by material deformation are the direct source of AE signals. On the other hand, avibration sensor measures the acceleration, which is the second derivative of the microdisplacement.
Different levels of tooth-cut faults were used for test in this paper. Specifically, 25%, 50%,
and 100% tooth cut were seeded. In order to understand the actual effect of the varying tooth-cut
conditions on the gear meshing activity, it is important to take a brief look at the gear profile
before and after the tooth cut. The schematic diagram of two gears meshing is shown in Fig. 1.
The terms shown in Fig. 1 are defined as follows:(1) Pitch circle: The circle through the pitch point having its center at the axis of the gear. The
pitch circle of a gear is an imaginary circle which passes through the point where the teeth
touch when one gear meshes with another.
(2) Base circle: The circle from which an involute tooth curve is generated or developed.
(3) Addendum: The radial distance between the pitch circle and the outside diameter or theheight of the tooth above the pitch.
(4) Dedendum: The radial distance from the pitch circle to the bottom of the tooth space.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of two gears meshing.
Contact ratio is defined as the number of angular pitches, through which a tooth surface
rotates from the beginning to the end of contact. In a simple way, it can be defined as a measure71	  of the average number of pairs of teeth in contact during the period, in which a tooth comes andgoes out of contact with the mating gear. It can be calculated as:𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑐𝑡  𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜 =   

!
!
!
!
𝑟!!
− 𝑟!!
+ 𝑟!!
− 𝑟!!
− 𝐶𝑠𝑖𝑛∅𝑃! 𝑐𝑜𝑠∅(1)where, 𝑟!! and 𝑟!! are addendum radius (distance from the tops of the teeth of a gear to the gear
center) and base radius (distance from the base circle to the gear center) for the pinion gear
center, and 𝑟!! and 𝑟!! are addendum radius and base radius from the pairing gear center,
respectively; C is the gear axis center distance; ∅ is the angle of the pressure line; 𝑃! is thecircular pitch of the pinion gear. Circular pitch is the length of the arc of the pitch circle between
the centers or other corresponding points of adjacent teeth. For more details of the concept andcalculation, refer to [33].
!
!
From Eq. (1), it can be inferred that as the tooth cut gets deeper, the term 𝑟!!
− 𝑟!!
keeps
decreasing until it reaches 0 when the tooth cut approaches the base circle. That is, the deeper
the gear tooth cut, the smaller the local contact ratio of the gear. As the contact ratio decreases,
the amount of meshing looseness increase, which is expected to generate larger gear noise.

Based on the diametral pitch system, addendum 𝑎  and dedendum 𝑏 can be calculated as:
1
𝑃!
1.157
𝑏=
𝑃!
𝑎=

(2)
(3)

where 𝑃! is the diameter pitch; 𝑎  is the addendum and 𝑏 is the dedendum as shown in Fig. 1.
From Eqs. (2) and (3), it is clear to see that in the case of 50% tooth cut, the depth of tooth
cut would be greater than the addendum depth. In other words, the remaining tooth depth issomewhere between the pitch circle to base circle. For a gear with a 50% tooth cut, when it
mates with another gear, the tooth would lose the initial contact point until the point on the pitch
circle and a little beyond. This will cause a larger backlash than normal condition, but theremaining tooth is still above the base circle, which would make the tooth able to provide
support in the next mating cycle. Based on the above analysis, it can be inferred that the gearwith 50% tooth loss will have a larger contact ratio and smaller backlash compared to 100%
tooth cut. Similarly, 50% tooth cut will have a larger backlash and smaller contact ratio
compared with 25% tooth cut. For a comparison between a gear with 25% tooth cut and ahealthy gear, the 25% tooth cut gear will have smaller contact ratio because it loses the tooth tip,which is essential for contact ratio. Thus, one would expect that a 25% tooth cut gear will havelarger backlash than healthy gear.
3. Gearbox Fault Diagnosis using AE and Vibration Sensors
In this paper, the performance of AE sensor using a low sampling rate of 20 kHz for gear
tooth cut-level diagnostics is investigated and compared with that of vibration sensor on a set ofseeded gear tooth cut fault test data collected using the same sampling rate. Before the results
are presented, both the diagnostic techniques using AE sensors and vibration sensors are
explained in this section.
72	
  3.1 AE based Gear Fault Diagnosis
3.1.1 The Heterodyne Technique: In a traditional AE signal processing procedure, all of the datais collected and stored to computer for signal processing. There are two disadvantages
associated with this procedure. First, it increases the data acquisition cost. Second, it relies on
the computer to process the resulting large dataset. A heterodyne-based frequency reduction
technique has been proposed in a previous research [24]. For the purpose of explanation, thebasic principles of heterodyne based frequency reduction technique are introduced next.
For rotating machinery, a periodic displacement (which may only cause a small acceleration)
can be an indication of a fault. The displacement will cause a distortion in the AE signature. The
information contained in the AE signature is related to the modulation rate of the signature. This
information can be recovered through a demodulation process. The demodulation process issimilar to information retrieval in an amplitude/phase modulated radio frequency signal. The
carrier signal of a typical AM radio signal is several MHz, while the information modulated ontothat signal is audio signal of a couple of kHz. After demodulating the carrier using an analog
signal conditioning circuit, the acquisition system can then be sampled at audio frequency (10sof kHz). This signal processing can then be performed at lower cost with an analog circuit incomparison with using a high speed analog to digital converter and the associated computation
power required to process the large data set as a result of a high sampling rate. It is worth
mentioning that the method of obtaining low frequency audio signal from high frequency AE
signals was common in AE equipment used in early years (e.g., Dunegan 3000). The audio
signals were used as an aid to detect some changes or as a warning. No attempt for quantitative
diagnostics is reported. Dunegan 3000 was based on DRC 301 totalizer and DRC 310 totalizer[34, 35]. After the AE signal entered the system, the audio part was recorded for audio
monitoring before it went through a band pass filter. The high frequency part then passed thetotalizer which performed the digital counting of events over a set amplitude threshold. After
that, the amplitude and counted pulse number were recorded for further analysis. The output of
the Dunegan 3000 monitoring system is basically AE pulse count and there is no waveform
signal recorded for further analysis. Heterodyne, on the other hand, could demodulate the signal
from high frequency range to low frequency while maintaining the signal integrity. This allows
more flexibility for further time domain and frequency analysis.
The AE signal demodulator implemented in this paper work similarly to a radio quadrature
demodulator: shifting the carrier frequency to baseband, followed by low-pass filtering. The
technique is called heterodyne. Mathematically, heterodyning is based on the trigonometricidentity. For two signals with frequency 𝑓! and 𝑓! , respectively, it could be written as:
𝑠𝑖𝑛 2𝜋𝑓! 𝑡 𝑠𝑖𝑛 2𝜋𝑓! 𝑡
1
1= cos 2𝜋 𝑓! − 𝑓! 𝑡 − cos 2𝜋 𝑓! + 𝑓! 𝑡
2
2

(4)

where, 𝑓! is the carrier frequency, 𝑓! is the reference input signal frequency of the demodulator.
The discussion on how the heterodyne technique can be applied to AE signals is provided
next. In general, amplitude modulation is the major modulation form for AE signals. Althoughfrequency modulation and phase modulation could both be presence in the AE signals potentially,
they are considered trivial and will not be discussed here. The amplitude modulation function is
given in Eq. (5):𝑈! = 𝑈! + 𝑚𝑥 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝜔! 𝑡)

(5)
73	
  

where,  𝑈! is the modulated signal, 𝑈! is the carrier signal amplitude, 𝜔! is the carrier signal
frequency, 𝑚 is the modulation coefficient, 𝑥 is the signal of interest. With an amplitude 𝑋!
and frequency Ω, assume that 𝑥 can be expressed as:
𝑥 = 𝑋! cos  (Ω𝑡)(6)Note that it is assumed that frequency  Ω of signal 𝑥 is normally much smaller than frequency
𝜔! of the carrier signal. Then, with heterodyne technique, the modulated signal   𝑈! will be
multiplied with a unit amplitude reference signal cos  (𝜔! 𝑡). The result is 𝑈! given as following:
𝑈! = 𝑈! + 𝑚𝑥 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝜔! 𝑡) 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝜔! 𝑡) = 𝑈! + 𝑚𝑥
By substituting Eq. (6) into Eq. (7), one gets:

1 1+ 𝑐𝑜𝑠 2𝜔! 𝑡
2 2

1
1
1
𝑈! = 𝑈! + 𝑚𝑋! 𝑐𝑜𝑠Ω𝑡 + 𝑈! 𝑐𝑜𝑠 2𝜔! 𝑡
2
2
2
1+ 𝑚𝑋! [𝑐𝑜𝑠 2𝜔! + Ω 𝑡 + 𝑐𝑜𝑠 2𝜔! − Ω 𝑡]
4

(7)

(8)

Since 𝑈! does not contain any useful information related with the modulated signal, it could
be set as 0, or removed by de-trending. From Eq. (8), it can be seen that only the part!
𝑚𝑋! 𝑐𝑜𝑠Ω𝑡 which is the signal of interest will be retained after low pass filtering, while the!
high frequency components around frequency 2𝜔! will be removed.
Gear	
  Box

AE	
  Sensor

Function	
  Generator

Demodulation	
  
board

Data	
  
Sampling

ComputerFig. 2. The AE signal acquisition and preprocessing procedure.
The diagram of the proposed down sampling system using heterodyne is shown in Fig. 2. By
adding a demodulation step, it could achieve the purpose of reducing the signal frequency to 10s
of kHz. This is close to the frequency range of general vibration signals. Any data acquisitionboard with a low sampling rate could be able to sample the pre-processed AE data.
A key to the success of applying the heterodyne technique to AE signals is to select the rightfrequency of the reference signal. In this paper, an optimization procedure is developed tosearch for the optimal frequency of the reference signal using a linear chirp function as thedemodulation input. In a linear chirp, the instantaneous frequency 𝑓(𝑡) varies linearly with time.
A linear chirp function can be described as:(9)
𝑓 𝑡 = 𝑓! + 𝑘𝑡
where 𝑓! is the initial frequency, 𝑘 is the chirp rate, 𝑓 𝑡 is the instantaneous frequency at time 𝑡.
In searching for the optimal reference frequency, normally a frequency range is pre-selected,
for example, 50 kHz - 1050 kHz. The chirp function will start with an initial frequency of 𝑓! and74	
  chirp with a constant rate of k. Before the presentation of the algorithm, the following terms aredefined:𝑓!"# = lowest  reference  frequency  𝑓!"# = highest  reference  frequency∆𝑓 = frequency  increment!
!!
𝑛 = !"#∆! !"# , the  total  number  of  frequency  segments
𝑁! = number  of  digitized  data  samples  in  each  segment  𝑖, 𝑖 = 1, … , 𝑛!
𝑋 𝑗 = digitized  modulated  signal  of  𝑥 𝑡 , where    𝑥 𝑡 = cos 2𝜋 𝑓! − 𝑓! 𝑡   as!
described in Eq. (4)𝑓 ∗ =   the  optimal  demodulation  reference  frequency  The optimization process is to search for the best frequency such that the RMS of thedemodulated signal is maximized. The optimal AE reference frequency searching procedure isdefined as follows:
Step 1. Set the initial frequency 𝑓! = 𝑓!"#!! !(!)!
!!! !!

Step 2. For i = 1 to n, calculate 𝑅𝑀𝑆! =Step 3. Find 𝑖 ∗ = arg  max!!!!!   𝑅𝑀𝑆!
Step 4. Compute optimal reference frequency of demodulation as 𝑓 ∗ = 𝑓! + 𝑖 ∗ ×∆𝑓
3.1.2 Time Synchronous Averaging: TSA has been widely used in processing the vibration
signals for rotating machine fault diagnosis [36-39]. The idea of TSA is to use the ensemble
average of a raw signal over certain number of revolutions in order to enhance signal of interest
with less noise from other sources. For a signal function x(t), being digitized at a samplinginterval nT, results in samples x(nT). Denoting the averaged period by mT, TSA is given as [39]:1𝑦 𝑛𝑇 =
𝑁!!!

𝑥 𝑛𝑇 − 𝑟𝑚𝑇

(10)

!!!

More details about TSA could be found in [36].
The successful application of TSA on vibration signal analysis provides opportunities forprocessing AE signals. Basically, two types of TSA algorithms are available in literature, i.e.,
TSA with tachometer and tachometer-less TSA. In comparison with TSA with tachometer,tachometer-less TSA needs to estimate the angular information from the vibration data. For slow
speed variation cases, time domain feature like gear meshing information could be used.
However, tachometer-less TSA will introduce more phase reference errors and thus have lessaccuracy than TSA with tachometer. In this paper, TSA with tachometer is used.
Despite of the popular applications of TSA to vibration signal analysis, application of TSA to
AE signal processing for gear fault diagnosis has not been reported in the literature. The
complicated feature and large data volume of AE signals make it unrealistic to perform TSA
algorithm directly on AE data. TSA enables the direct comparison of the vibration/AE signals
produced by each tooth on the same gear over one revolution. TSA for gear diagnosis generally
computes the vibration/AE signals of a single shaft revolution. After TSA is calculated,basically all kind of fault detection condition indicators can be evaluated on the TSA signal.

75	
  TSA enables the direct comparison of the vibration/acoustic signals produced by each toothon the same gear over one revolution. TSA for gear diagnosis generally computes thevibration/AE signals of a single shaft revolution. After TSA is calculated, basically all kind of
fault detection condition indicators can be evaluated on the TSA signal.
3.1.3 AE Condition Indicators: Many condition indicators have been reported in literature forgear fault diagnosis. Most of the condition indicators deal with the data distribution such as
amplitude level, peakedness, deviation from the mean, and so on. In this paper, the following
AE-based condition indicators are used: RMS, P2P, and kurtosis. They are described next.
RMS: The root mean square for a discretized signal is defined as:𝑥!"# =

1
𝑁

(11)

!

(𝑥! ! )  !!!

where 𝑥!"# is the root mean square value of dataset 𝑥, 𝑥! is the ith element of 𝑥, N is the length ofdataset 𝑥.
P2P: Peak to peak value of a dataset 𝑥 is defined as:
𝑀𝑎𝑥 𝑥 − 𝑀𝑖𝑛 𝑥2where, 𝑀𝑎𝑥 𝑥 is the maximum value of 𝑥, 𝑀𝑖𝑛(𝑥) is the minimum value of 𝑥.
𝑃2𝑃 =

(12)

Kurtosis: kurtosis describes how peaky or how smooth of the amplitude of dataset 𝑥 is. If asignal contains sharp peaks with high values generated by a fault in the gearbox, it is expectedthat its distribution function will be sharper. Thus, the kurtosis of the fault signal should behigher than that of the healthy signal. The function of kurtosis is given as:
!
(13)
𝑁 !
!!!(𝑥! − 𝑥)𝐾𝑢𝑟𝑡 = !
[ !!!(𝑥! − 𝑥)! ]!
where Kurt is the kurtosis of dataset 𝑥, 𝑥! is the ith element of 𝑥, N is the length of dataset 𝑥.

Note that the kurtosis defined in Eq. (13) is the normalized kurtosis, i.e., kurtosis proper. It is
worth mentioning that for any normal distribution, the kurtosis proper is 3 and excess kurtosis iszero.
3.2 Vibration-based Gear Fault Diagnosis
For vibration signals, a similar process flow is applied except heterodyne technique, which is
not needed for vibration signals. In general, the vibration signal frequency is more closely
related to gearbox rotational frequency and mechanical interaction. Therefore, vibration signals
typically contain more mechanical background noise than AE signals. Condition indicators P2P
and kurtosis computed on the AE signals will also be computed on vibration signals for fault
diagnosis. RMS generally does not work for vibration signal in the case of single tooth damage.
Therefore, it is not selected for vibration analysis. In addition, P2P and kurtosis based onresidual signal and Teager’s energy operator of the vibration TSA are also computed. The
concepts of residual signal and Teager’s energy operator are described next.
Residual signal: Residual signals generally refer to the TSA signals with the rotating frequency
and meshing frequency as well as their harmonics removed.
76	
  Teager’s Energy Operator:	
   Teager’s energy operator (EO) is a type of residual of the
autocorrelation function [40]. For a nominal gear, the predominant vibration is gear meshing.
Surface disturbances, scuffing, and etc., generate small higher frequency values which are notremoved by autocorrelation. The condition indicators of the EO are the standard statistics of theEO vector. The ith element in EO vector is computed as:
𝜓 𝑥! = 𝑥!! − 𝑥!!! ∙ 𝑥!!!

(14)

where, 𝑥! is the ith data point of signal   𝑥.
Further, P2P and kurtosis of residual signals and energy operators are calculated as fault
distinguishing condition indicators. In addition to P2P and kurtosis, FM0 can also be computed
as a condition indictor from vibration TSA signals.
FM0: FM0 is the zero-order figure of merit. It is a global indicator that reacts to changes in thewhole frequency range of the average and identifies major abnormal behaviors with regard tomeshing pattern. FM0 is defined as the ratio of peak-to-peak amplitude (PPA) of the TSA signal
to the sum of amplitudes of gear mesh frequency and its harmonics. An increase in PPA level isgenerally observed in case of major tooth faults such as tooth breakage without significant
change in the mesh frequency, which will result in increase of FM0 value [41]. FM0 will
increase if a periodic signal contains a local increase in amplitude. Mathematically, it isexpressed as following:
𝐹𝑀0 =𝑃2𝑃!"#!
!!! 𝐴(𝑓! )(15)

where: 𝑃2𝑃!"# is the peak to peak value of the vibration signal of TSA in the time domain; 𝐴(𝑓! )is the amplitude of the ith harmonic of the gear meshing frequency.
4. Experimental Setup
In order to compare the performance of the AE and vibration sensors of gearbox fault
diagnostics, tests with seeded faults of gear tooth cut were conducted on a notational two-stage
split torque gearbox (STG). In an STG, there are several identical intermediate gear pairs, which
could split the torque evenly. Also, the intermediate gear pair could offer a larger transmission
ratio. Both the input side and output side of the STG use parallel shaft layout. All of the gears
inside are spur gears. On the input side, the input driving gear is a 40 teeth gear, which drives
three input driven gear with 72 teeth each. On the output side, three output driving gears with 48
teeth drive a 64 teeth gear (see Fig. 3). A 3-HP three-phase induction ac motor with a maximum
speed of 3600 rpm is used to drive the notional gearbox. To accommodate for shaft
misalignment and reduce the vibration transmission, a disc type coupling is utilized to transmit
the torque from the motor to the driving shaft. A magnetic loading system is controlled by apower supply and the load can be adjusted by changing the output current of the power supply.
The test rig and sensor locations are shown in Fig. 4.
As a speed reduction gearbox, the input side and the output side have a 2.4 times speed
reduction ratio. Based in the input speeds tested in the experiments, the corresponding output
shaft speed and intermediate shaft (faulty gear shaft) speed are provided in Table 1.

77	
  Fig. 3. The structure of the notational split torque gearbox.
Radial	  vibration	  sensor	  Axial	
  vibration	  sensor	  AE	
  sensor	  Fig. 4. The notational split torque gearbox and sensor locations.
Table 1. Output shaft speed corresponding to input shaft speed.
Input shaft speed (Hz)

10

20

30

40

50

60

Faulty gear shaft frequency (Hz)

5.56

11.1

16.7

22.2

27.8

33.3

Output shaft speed (Hz)

4.17

8.33

12.5

16.7

20.8

25

For the faulty gearbox, one of the intermediate gears with 48 teeth on the output side wasdamaged by cutting a gear tooth with certain percentages. As shown in Fig. 5, 25%, 50%, and100% tooth cut were created, respectively. The fault created here is relatively large, but the
tooth cut did not cause any severe failure to the gearbox because of the split torque feature. The
slack or loss of motion due to the tooth cut or tooth missing on one of the driving pinion gears
can be compensated by the other two driving pinion gears.

78	
  One AE sensor and two accelerometers were mounted on the gearbox. The AE sensor was
attached to the gear housing using adhesives as shown in Fig. 4. One accelerometer was
mounted on the gearbox housing in the axial direction and the other one was mounted on top of
gearbox housing in the radial direction (see Fig. 4). The signals from all of the three sensors
were collected simultaneously during the test runs. In addition, tachometer signals werecollected along with vibration and AE signals.

Fig. 5. Seeded tooth cut faults.
For AE data acquisition, a differential wideband sensor (PAC WD) was used. It has a goodfrequency response over the range of 100 – 900 kHz. Differential sensors offer a lower noise
output from a pre-amplifier. The accelerometers used for vibration data collection were theindustrial ICP accelerometer model No. IMI 608-A11. The frequency response of theaccelerometers is from 0.5 Hz– 10 kHz. The heterodyne process was accomplished by ahardware demodulation using a demodulator IC (Analog Devices-AD8339) and a sampling
device (NI-DAQ 6211). The demodulator performed the multiplication of sensor signals andreference signals. The demodulator is an analog device and much more affordable than a highsampling rate data acquisition board. It takes two inputs, one from the AE sensor, and the otherfrom function generator as a reference signal. The basic principle of the demodulator board
could be explained by Gilbert cell mixers. In electronics, the Gilbert cell is commonly used as
an analog multiplier and frequency mixer. The output current of this circuit is an accurate
multiplication of the base currents of the both inputs. According to Eq. (4), it could convert thesignals to baseband and twice the carrier frequency. The frequency of reference signal was
obtained as 400 kHz by the optimization algorithm described in Section 3.1. In searching for the
optimized reference frequency, a chirp function with a range of 50 kHz - 1050 kHz was selected
to cover the whole sensor response range. The chirp function started with an initial frequency of
50 kHz and chirped up at a rate of 139.89 kHz/s. The output of the demodulator goes to the79	  sampling device and the high frequency component is filtered out. NI-DAQ 6211 is a low-speed
data acquisition device with a sample rate up to 250 kS/s.
For signal acquisition, LabView signal express software was used. During the experiments,
continuous AE signals were collected. The data sampling rate was set to 100 kHz for both
vibration and AE signals in order to make a fair comparison. A light torque load was applied to
the gearbox during the test. The gearbox was run with 6 different input shaft speeds staring from
10 Hz then increased with a 10-Hz increment to 60 Hz. For each speed, 5 data sets werecollected. In order to get a good TSA results, signals over approximately 200 revolutions wererecorded.
5. Results and Discussions
In this section, the diagnostic results of the tests of gears with seeded cut fault using both AE
and vibration sensors with a sampling rate of 20 kHz are provided and discussed.
5.1 Results of AE Signals
After heterodyning, TSA was performed on the AE signals first to get the TSA signals using
tachometer signal as the phase reference. Then the AE condition indicators were calculated on
the AE TSA signals. Three condition indicators were computed on the AE TSA signals: RMS,
P2P, and kurtosis.
Figure 6 shows the RMS plots of the AE TSA signals. The data set number are arranged for
input shaft speed from 10 Hz to 60 Hz, five data sets for each speed. It can be seen from Fig. 6that the RMS provided a good trend for the energy level with speed increase. For different levelsof tooth cut, the RMS could roughly separate from each other. This indicates that AE signals are
sensitive to the gear meshing impact due to both speed and severity level of the tooth fault.
More importantly, the separation between the faulty signals and the healthy ones is clear. A
carefully chosen threshold could easily indicate the presence of a fault.
0.02	
  0.018	  AE	
  TSA	
  RMS	  (Volts)	
  0.016	
  0.014	
  0.012	
  Healthy	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  

0.01	
  

25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  0.008	
  50%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  0.006	
  100%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  0.004	
  0.002	
  
0	
  
1	
   3	
   5	
   7	
   9	
   11	
  13	
  15	
  17	
  19	
  21	
  23	
  25	
  27	
  29	
  31	
  
Data	
  set	
  number	  Fig. 6. RMS of AE TSA signals.
80	
  Note that within each input shaft speed, the data set are not correlated. Hence, point by pointcomparison may not justify the overall detection ability. In order to evaluate the diagnostic
ability of the proposed methods, the data sets collected at each speed were further averaged togive a clearer result. Fig. 7 shows the RMS averages of AE TSA signals at each input shaft
speed. The rest of the results on other condition indicators will be shown in a similar manner.
Figure 8 shows the P2P average plots of AE TSA signals. As can be seen from Fig. 8, P2P
generally shows a trend as the speed increases but contains some fluctuations compared with
RMS. Nonetheless, P2P also gives a good separation for different levels of the tooth damage.
0.018	  AE	
  TSA	
  RMS	  (Volts)	
  0.016	
  0.014	
  0.012	
  0.01	
  Healthy	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  0.008	  25%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  0.006	
  50%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  0.004	
  100%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  RMS	
  0.002	
  
0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 7. RMS average of AE TSA signals.
0.07	
  

AE	
  TSA	
  P2P	  (Volts)	
  

0.06	
  
0.05	
  
0.04	
  

Healthy	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  

0.03	
  

25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  50%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  

0.02	
  

100%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  

0.01	
  
0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 8. P2P average of AE TSA signals.
Figure 9 shows the kurtosis average plots of the AE TSA signals. Although kurtosis cannot
reliably distinguish the fault levels, it acts as a good condition indicator for fault detection.
81	
  Kurtosis measures the peakedness of the signals. It is a non-quantitative parameter, which means
it is independent of the magnitude of the signal. As one can see from Fig. 9, the kurtosis of thehealthy signals is close to 3. When a tooth fault is present, the kurtosis value normally increases.
In addition, kurtosis is not affected largely by speed. Therefore it is useful for making fault
detection decisions under varying speed condition.

AE	
  TSA	
  kurtosis	
  

4	
  

Healthy	
  TSA	
  kurtosis	
  

3.5	
  

25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	  kurtosis	
  
3	
  

50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	  kurtosis	
  100%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	  kurtosis	
  

2.5	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 9. Kurtosis average of AE TSA signals.
5.2 Results of Vibration Analysis
Vibration sensors, typically accelerometers, measure the acceleration, which is the second
derivative of displacement. The frequency response range of vibration signals is much lower
than that of AE signals. Therefore a vibration signal has the advantage of representing themechanical behavior more closely. But it also has the disadvantage of being easily effected bymechanical resonance. Similar to AE signal processing, TSA was performed on raw vibration
signals first, then the condition indicators were computed. A total of three condition indicators
were computed for vibration signals: P2P, kurtosis, and FM0.
During the seeded fault tests, both axial and radial direction vibration signals were collected
and analyzed. Figures 10 to 15 provide the results from the axial direction vibration sensor.
Figures 16 and 17 give the results from the radial vibration sensor.
In order to make a comparison with the AE results, condition indicators were first calculatedon the vibration TSA signals. Since RMS generally does not work for vibration signal in thecase of single tooth damage, it is not shown here.
Figure 10 shows the P2P average plots of the TSA for the axial direction vibration sensor.
The healthy TSA P2P overlaps with TSA P2P of 100% tooth cut. Also, the healthy TSA P2P isabove that of 25% tooth cut. In order to get a better result, the residual signals were computedfrom the TSA signals to remove the low frequency background machine noises and the meshingcomponents. The TSA residual P2P average plots of the axial direction vibration sensor are
shown in Fig. 11.

82	
  0.025	
  TSA	
  P2P	  (Volts)	
  

0.02	
  
Healthy	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  0.015	  25%	  tooth	  cut	
  Residual	
  
p2p	
  

0.01	
  

50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  0.005	
  100%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  

0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 10. P2P average of axial direction vibration sensor.

VibraAon	  TSA	  residual	  P2P	  (Volts)	
  0.012	
  0.01	
  Healthy	
  Residual	
  p2p	
  0.008	
  0.006	  25%	  tooth	  cut	
  Residual	
  
p2p	
  

0.004	
  50%	  tooth	  cut	
  Residual	
  
p2p	
  

0.002	
  100%	  tooth	  cut	
  Residual	
  
p2p	
  

0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 11. Residual P2P average of axial direction vibration sensor.
As can be seen from Fig. 11, in comparison with the results shown in Fig. 10, taking the TSA
residuals significantly removed the noise and improved separation of the faults from the healthy
signals. It can be seen also that in the low input shaft speed range below 30 Hz, the vibration
residual P2P has some overlap with 25% tooth cut. In the high-speed range, the vibration
residual P2P with tooth faults increases significantly and can be used for fault detection purpose
for all damage levels. However, vibration residual P2P is not sensitivity to the level of tooth cut
as the P2P of 50% tooth cut is higher than that of 100% tooth cut.
Similarly with P2P, taking the residual of the vibration TSA signals would improve the fault
detection using kurtosis condition indicator. Figures 12 and 13 show the kurtosis averages of the
TSA and TSA residuals, respectively. From Fig. 12, it can be seen that vibration TSA kurtosis
does not work for fault detection.
83	
  

12	
  

TSA	
  kurtosis	
  

10	
  

Healthy	
  Residual	  kurtosis	
  

8	
  
6	
  

25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	  kurtosis	
  

4	
  

50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	  kurtosis	
  

2	
  

100%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	  kurtosis	
  

0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
  

30Hz	
  

40Hz	
  

50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 12 Kurtosis average of the axial direction vibration sensor.
Figure 13 gives the kurtosis average plots of the TSA residual signals. Compared with TSA
kurtosis, it gives better separation between the healthy ones and faulty ones. Kurtosis values of
50% and 100% tooth cut are mostly higher than the healthy counterpart. However, the 25%
tooth cut kurtosis is lower than the healthy one which makes it unable to detect the 25% tooth cut
fault. Also, vibration kurtosis is not effective for tooth cut level differentiation.

VibraAon	  TSA	  residual	
  kurtosis	
  

12	
  
10	
  
Healthy	
  Residual	  kurtosis	
  

8	
  
6	
  

25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  Residual	  kurtosis	
  

4	
  

50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  Residual	  kurtosis	
  

2	
  

100%	
  tooth	  cut	
  Residual	  kurtosis	
  

0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 13. Residual kurtosis average of axial direction vibration sensor.
In order to investigate other condition indicators, P2P and kurtosis were also computed on
the energy operator signals. Fig. 14 shows the P2P average of the TSA energy operator signals
from the axial direction vibration sensor. Similarly with the P2P of the residual signals, it works
in high speed range for fault detection purpose but not in the low speed range.

84	  Energy	  operator	
  P2P	  	
  1.20E-­‐04	
  1.00E-­‐04	
  
8.00E-­‐05	
  Healthy	
  TSA	
  Energy	
  operator	  p2p	
  6.00E-­‐05	
  25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  Energy	  operator	
  p2p	
  4.00E-­‐05	
  50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  Energy	  operator	
  p2p	
  2.00E-­‐05	
  

100%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  Energy	  operator	
  p2p	
  0.00E+00	
  10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 14. Energy operator P2P average of axial direction vibration sensor.
Figure 15 shows the kurtosis averages of the TSA energy operator signals of the axial
direction vibration sensor. It can be seen that the healthy signal energy operator kurtosis
overlaps with that of 25% tooth cut, which makes the 25% tooth cut fault undetectable. For 50%
and 100% tooth cuts, it mostly works.

Energy	  operator	
  kurtosis	
  

120	
  
100	
  

Healthy	
  TSA	
  Energy	
  operator	
  kurtosis	
  

80	
  
60	
  

25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  Energy	  operator	
  kurtosis	
  

40	
  

50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  Energy	  operator	
  kurtosis	
  

20	
  

100%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  Energy	  operator	
  kurtosis	
  

0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 15. Energy operator kurtosis average of axial vibration sensor.
The results shown above are based on the axial direction vibration sensor. Fig. 16 shows theP2P averages of the radial direction vibration TSA signals. It can be seen from Fig. 16 that theradial vibration signal are affected by the mechanical resonance. The P2P average trends areinconsistent with speed increase. Basically, the healthy P2P of radial direction vibration
overlaps the faulty ones, especially with 25% tooth cut. It is not reliable for fault detection anddamage level separation.

85	  VibraAon	
  TSA	
  P2P	  (Volts)	
  0.025	
  0.02	
  0.015	
  Healthy	
  TSA	
  P2P	  25%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  

0.01	
  

50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  100%	  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  P2P	
  0.005	
  
0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Sha8	
  speed	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 16. P2P average of radial direction vibration sensor.
Figure 17 shows FM0 average plots of the radial direction vibration sensors. It can be seenthat FM0 of the faulty signals are mostly higher than the healthy ones. At the speed of 30 Hz,
FM0 for all cases dropped to a very low level and overlapped each other. This was likely causedby the resonance.
40	
  
35	
  
VibraAon	  FM0	  30	
  Healthy	
  TSA	
  FM0	
  

25	
  
25%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  FM0	
  

20	
  
15	
  

50%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  FM0	
  

10	
  
5	
  

100%	
  tooth	  cut	
  TSA	
  
FM0	
  

0	
  
10Hz	
   20Hz	
   30Hz	
   40Hz	
   50Hz	
   60Hz	  Speed	
  sha8	
  (Hz)	
  Fig. 17. FM0 average of radial direction vibration sensor.
In summary, it can be seen that for axial direction vibration sensor mounted on the gearbox
housing, the P2P and kurtosis of the residual signals and energy operator show good fault
detection potential, although most of them do not work for 25% tooth cut. On the other hand, forthe radial direction vibration sensor mounted on the gearbox housing, both P2P and FM0 are
highly affected by the machine resonance. FM0 might act as a good condition indicator in the
speed range that was not heavily affected by resonance. Compared with AE results, none of thevibration condition indicators could detect all the faults and separate the damage levels. The
vibration signals are highly affected by background noise and mechanical resonance, making it86	  unstable in diagnostic performance. AE RMS and P2P show a roughly linear relationshipagainst input shaft speed. They could clearly indicate the tooth cut levels for diagnostics. Also,
the kurtosis of AE signals offers another effective indication for fault detection.
As explained in Section 2, the tooth cut fault is the direct cause of larger backlash andreduction in contact ratio. Both the large backlash and low contract ratio introduce morelooseness during gear meshing and therefore cause higher impact and gear noise. From thisperspective, it can be inferred that AE sensors are much more sensitive to impact energy.
Vibration measured by accelerometer is the velocity signal, which is less sensitive to direct
impact energy.
6. Conclusions
AE sensors have been investigated as a potential tool for machinery health monitoring andfault diagnostics. While AE sensors could possibly provide higher fault detection sensitivity
compared with vibration sensors, they also have some drawbacks. AE sensors generally output
signals in the range of several hundred kHz up to several MHz, making the AE data sampling
and processing costly.
In this paper, a method on gearbox fault diagnosis using AE sensors with a low sampling rate
was presented. In the presented method, a heterodyne-based frequency reduction technique isemployed to demodulate the AE signals and shift signal frequencies to a low range. The AE
signals are sampled at a rate as low as 20 kHz, which is typically used for vibration signals
sampling in industrial applications. Time synchronous average signals are computed from AE
signals sampled at the low rate and used to compute condition indicators for gear fault diagnosis.
The diagnostic performance of the condition indictors computed was compared using both AE
and vibration data sampled at the same rate of 20 kHz, which is the typical industrial sampling
rate for vibration signals. Both AE and vibration data was collected on a notational split torque
gearbox with different levels of seeded tooth faults. The results have shown that AE signals
sampled at a low rate suffice for fault detection purpose and are promising for damage level
diagnosis. Compared with vibration analysis results, AE provides better fault diagnosis
sensitivity to tooth damage level.
References[1]

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