Condition monitoring of gearboxes using synchronously averaged electric motor signals

Due to their prevalence in rotating machinery, the condition monitoring of gearboxes is extremely important in the minimization of potentially dangerous and expensive failures. Traditionally, gearbox condition monitoring has been conducted using measurements obtained from casing-mounted vibration transducers such as accelerometers. A well-established technique for analyzing such signals is the synchronous signal average, where vibration signals are synchronized to a measured angular position and then averaged from rotation to rotation. Driven, in part, by improvements in control methodologies based upon methods of estimating rotor speed and torque, induction machines are used increasingly in industry to drive rotating machinery. As a result, attempts have been made to diagnose defects using measured terminal currents and voltages. In this paper, the application of the synchronous signal averaging methodology to electric drive signals, by synchronizing stator current signals with a shaft position estimated from current and voltage measurements is proposed. Initially, a test-rig is introduced based on an induction motor driving a two-stage reduction gearbox which is loaded by a DC motor. It is shown that a defect seeded into the gearbox may be located using signals acquired from casing-mounted accelerometers and shaft mounted encoders. Using simple models of an induction motor and a gearbox, it is shown that it should be possible to observe gearbox defects in the measured stator current signal. A robust method of extracting the average speed of a machine from the current frequency spectrum, based on the location of sidebands of the power supply frequency due to rotor eccentricity, is presented. The synchronous signal averaging method is applied to the resulting estimations of rotor position and torsional vibration. Experimental results show that the method is extremely adept at locating gear tooth defects. Further results, considering different loads and different gears in the gearbox suggest some potential advantages and limitations of the method and provide some motivation for future investigations. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.