Dynamic Modelling and Fault Feature Analysis of Gear Tooth Pitting and Spalling

Abstract

Fault feature analysis of gear tooth spall plays a vital role in gear fault diagnosis. Knowing the characteristic of fault features and their evolution as a gear tooth fault progresses is key to fault severity assessment. This thesis provides a comprehensive (both theoretical and experimental) analysis of the fault vibration features of a gear transmission with progressive localized gear tooth pitting and spalling. A dynamic model of a one-stage spur gear transmission is proposed to analyze the vibration behavior of a gear transmission with tooth fault. The proposed dynamic model considers the effects of Time Varying Mesh Stiffness (TVMS), tooth surface roughness changes and geometric deviations due to pitting and spalling, and also incorporates a time-varying load sharing ratio, as well as dynamic tooth contact friction forces, friction moments and dynamic mesh damping ratios. The gear dynamical model is validated by comparison with responses obtained from an experimental test rig under different load and fault conditions. In addition, several methods are proposed for the evaluation of the TVMS of a gear pair with tooth spall(s) with curved bottom and irregular shapes, which fills the current research gap on modelling tooth spalls with irregular shapes and randomly distribution conditions. Experiments are conducted and the fault vibration features and their evolution as the tooth fault progresses are analyzed. Based on feature analysis, a new health indicator is proposed to detect progressive localized tooth spall.