Amplitudes of characteristic frequencies for fault diagnosis of planetary gearbox

Abstract Frequency contents have been widely investigated to understand the vibration behaviors of planetary gearboxes. Appearances of certain sideband peaks in the frequency spectrum may indicate the occurrence of gear fault. However, analyzing too many sidebands will create problems and uncertainty of fault diagnoses. To this end, it is of vital importance to focus on those sidebands, as well as their amplitudes, which are directly induced by the gear faults. The Sideband Energy Ratio (SER) method, which synthesize the amplitudes of characteristic frequencies and meshing frequency, has shown its effectiveness in fault diagnosis of fixed-shaft gearboxes. However, for planetary gearboxes, the effectiveness and theoretical explanation behind this method still needs to be explored. In this paper, we first explored the amplitudes of characteristic frequencies based on a phenomenological model. Our investigation demonstrated that monitoring the amplitude of a single frequency component is inadequate for fault diagnosis of planetary gearbox. Second, the theoretical explanation of SER for a planetary gearbox is explored. Finally, a modified SER, namely the Modified Sideband Energy Ratio, is proposed to deal with the problem of rotating speed fluctuation. Experimental studies are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.