Development of a Novel Sensor for Gear Teeth Wear and Damage Detection

Abstract

Health monitoring of mechanical transmission systems is an important area of research. Mechanical transmission systems, especially gear boxes in aircraft, automobiles, and wind turbines etc. account for many of the maintenance costs due to repairs, replacements and downtime. Gear boxes can experience high level of failure due to varied load conditions and harsh environments. Replacing the gear box is quite an expensive process and has significant downtime. Current gear box monitoring involves mainly measuring vibrations, however vibrations occur when the fault in the gear has already progressed significantly. Gear teeth monitoring lacks sensor technology to successfully detect tooth damage and misalignment.
 This paper presents a new concept gear teeth damage detection using eddy current sensors fitted on to the teeth of an idler gear at various locations. These sensors detect various faults encountered in a gear such as micro and macro pitting of the tooth surface, contact wear etc. Eddy current sensors are already being used to detect turbomachinery blade vibrations and tip clearance as they are robust and immune to contamination. In the present case, we use an idler gear that incorporates miniature eddy current sensors and state of the art electronics with wireless data transmission to enable the device to operate remotely and in harsh environments. A rotating rig with gears (spur and helical) and oil supply was built to test and validate the sensor by seeding various faults on the tooth surface. The results show that the idler sensor gear was able to detect various faults. The new eddy current sensor idler gear concept will enable health monitoring of the gearbox and ensure timely maintenance and reduction in operation costs.

Identification of Q value and angular frequency of smart gear antenna using the resonant return loss of the receiving antenna

“…Nevertheless, since the vibration signal processing technique is also a sophisticated technique with numerous signal processing steps, the combination of this technique and the other convolutional neuron network technique or the acoustic emission basically increases the number of steps for reliable results. In the case of the techniques that use sensors and smart materials, the results of [8] confirmed that the effectiveness of the eddy current sensors is undeniable. The attached sensors on the idler gear were able to detect pitting on the face of the metal gear but the accuracy of the result of this study [8] depends considerably on the metallic material of the gear and the density of sensors on the idler gear.…”

“…The attached sensors on the idler gear were able to detect pitting on the face of the metal gear but the accuracy of the result of this study [8] depends considerably on the metallic material of the gear and the density of sensors on the idler gear. In comparison to [8], although the application of wireless sensor nodes in [9] can reduce the general dimensions of the gear health monitoring system remarkably, the complexity of the power supply module requires meticulous consideration before the application. Probably, the use of MEMS sensors can be considered a high-accuracy method.…”

“…Currently, the use of sensors or sensitive materials for gear health monitoring purposes is also widespread. The study by [8] attempted to use eddy current sensors for the diagnosis of the failure of the gear teeth. [9] installed wireless temperature nodes on the housing of a gearbox for monitoring common potential faults such as gear teeth damage or oil level.…”

A Review on Sensor‐Integrating Machine Elements

“…The authors have identified the following examples that can be categorized as sensor-integrating gears: i) Additively manufactured metal spur gear wheel with an integrated accelerometer; [115] ii) case-hardened metal helical gear wheel with hall sensor, accelerometer, temperature sensor, and microphone inside; [116] iii) plastic spur gear wheel with an eddy-current sensor in the teeth; [117] iv) metal spur gear wheel with resistance sensors on the side; [118] v) sensor-integrating metal spur gear with accelerometer on the side. [119,120]…”

“…Binder et al, [115] Sridhar & Chana, [117] Peters et al [119,120] use a feather key to fix the gears on the shaft. The feather key concentrates the stress of the interaction between the shaft and the wheel at a certain orbital position.…”