The investigation of the condition and faults of a spur gearbox using vibration and wear debris analysis techniques

The aim of this work is to investigate the effectiveness of combining both vibration analysis and wear debris analysis in an integrated machine condition monitoring maintenance program. To this end, a series of studies was conducted on a spur gearbox test rig. After a test under normal condition was conducted to obtain the baseline information of the test rig, a number of different machine defect conditions were introduced under controlled operating conditions, corresponding to (i) constant overload conditions and (ii) cyclic load conditions. The data provided by wear debris analysis was compared with vibration analysis spectra in order to quantify the effectiveness of both vibration analysis and wear debris analysis in predicting and diagnosing machine failures. The paper discusses the use of a numerical approach for wear debris analysis, facilitated by the use of a laser scanning confocal microscope (LSCM). The correlation between wear debris and vibration analysis techniques is discussed, and the usefulness of the numerical descriptors for wear debris analysis is evaluated.