Instantaneous Energy Spectrum Based Gear Fault Detection and Diagnosis

A method for monitoring and diagnosis the gear fault according to instantaneous energy spectrum based on the newly developed empirical mode decomposition (EMD) scheme is presented. EMD can adaptively decompose the vibration signal into a series of zero mean oscillatory functions called intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). Hilbert transform can track the instantaneous amplitude and instantaneous frequency of the intrinsic mode functions at any instant. Then the instantaneous energy spectrum can be calculated based on the intrinsic mode functions. The instantaneous energy is thus associated with the deterioration in gear condition and can be utilized for gear damage detection. The experimental results show that instantaneous energy spectrum of the vibration signal is a sensitive indicator of the existence of damage in the gear transmission.