One stage spur gear transmission crankcase diagnosis using the independent components method

Abstract

The preventive diagnosis of mechanical systems presents a promising tool for increasing the production because it allows the industry to save time and money. In fact, the conventional diagnosis process is based on the FRF method which can be used to determine the inside defects frequencies of the system. Hence, this paper presents a new and a useful idea based on the blind source separation (BSS) which allow determining the wave form and the excitation frequency of internal defects present in a given mechanism by using only the structural vibratory response of the system. Numerical example of a one stage spur gear transmission crankcase including a spur gear pairs, shafts, rolling element bearings and a casing composed by three rigid plates and one flexible plate is presented and analysed in this paper. The separation results show a good agreement between original and estimated sources. This demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed method in the diagnosis process.