A Novel Gear Condition Monitoring Method Based on Transient Impulse Response

In this paper a new method for gear condition monitoring is presented. The method exploits the system transient dynamic response due to impulse-like excitation produced by the repetitive gear meshing. The transient response pattern is easily observed at the underlying system or subsystem's natural frequency, also referred to as the "carrier frequency". At these carrier frequencies, the vibration magnitude is directly related to the intensity of the meshing force impulse, which is implemented as a condition indicator. Also, the modulation frequency of the filtered vibration at the "carrier frequency" can be used to determine the source of the component modulating the output. Four gear vibration data sets from a spiral bevel gear test rig at NASA Glenn Research Center were analyzed. The condition indicator (CI) based on transient impulse response method (TIRM) was competitive with other prevalent condition indicators in providing effective detection of the gear damage severity, and offered superior performance in locating the damage source in the gear/pinion pairs.