Fault features analysis of a compound planetary gear set with damaged planet gears

The fault properties of compound planetary gear set are much more complicated than the simple planetary gear set. A damaged planet will induce two periodic transient impulses in the raw signals and generates modulation sidebands around the mesh harmonics. This paper aims to investigate the fault properties of a compound planetary gear set in damaged planet conditions. A dynamic model is proposed to simulate the vibration signals. The time interval between the fault-induced close impulses in the time domain is used as a significant feature to locate the faulty planet. Considering the phase relations, the time-varying mesh stiffness is obtained. Then, the fault properties are demonstrated in the simulation, and the theoretical derivations are experimentally verified.