Vibration Characterization and Fault Diagnosis of a Planetary Gearbox with a Wireless Embedded Sensor

A planetary gearbox is more complex in structure and motion than a gearbox with a fixed shaft, making it difficult to monitor and make a fault diagnosis in practice. Components must be frequently inspected to avoid excessive wear, but there is no simple way to directly measure wear. The most direct method is to log vibration and temperature signals using external sensors. Wireless sensors offer more space advantages than a wired one, so this study developed a measurement system that features a three-axis MEMS accelerometer, temperature sensing and wireless modules that are integrated into a planetary gearbox. Along with the system, a virtual instrument (VI) utilizing graphics programming language LabVIEW was developed to acquire and display data time and frequency domains to detect the gear’s faults. To determine the root cause of vibrations in a planetary gearbox, determine the vibration signal model of amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM) due to gear damage and derive the characteristic frequencies of vibrations for a planetary gearbox, the characteristic frequencies and AMFM modulation were summarized in closed form. Different degrees of each gear damage were then detected in the planetary gearbox. The vibration signal model was validated by experiments to indicate the sideband around the gear meshing frequency and its feasibility for fault diagnosis of a planetary gearbox with the wireless embedded sensor.