A Mechanism-Based Automatic Fault Diagnosis Method for Gearboxes

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Nov 25;22(23):9150. doi: 10.3390/s22239150.

Abstract

Convenient and fast fault diagnosis is the key to improving the service safety and maintenance efficiency of gearboxes. However, the environment and working conditions under complex service conditions are variable, and there is a lack of fault samples in engineering applications. These factors lead to difficulties in intelligent diagnosis methods based on machine learning, while traditional mechanism-based fault diagnosis requires high expertise and long time periods for the manual analysis of data. For the requirements of diagnostic convenience, an automatic fault diagnosis method for gearboxes is proposed in this paper. The method achieves accurate acquisition of rotational speed by constructing a rotational frequency search algorithm. The self-referencing characteristic frequency identification method is proposed to avoid manual signal analysis. On this basis, a framework of anti-interference automatic diagnosis is constructed to realize automatic diagnosis of gear faults. Finally, a gear fault experiment is carried out based on a high-fidelity experimental bench of bogie to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed automatic diagnosis method does not rely on a large number of fault samples and avoids the need for diagnosis through professional knowledge, thus saving time for data analysis and promoting the application of fault diagnosis methods.

Keywords: automatic diagnosis method; fault frequency identification; gear faults; rotational frequency search algorithm.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Data Analysis*
  • Engineering
  • Intelligence
  • Knowledge

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the China National Railway Group Limited (Grant number P2021J036), the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by CAST (Grant number 2020QNRC001), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province, China (grant number 2021JJ40765).