On a Prognosis of Gear Surface Failure Using Sound of Gears

Abstract

Usually the faults on the gear surface are noticed by a change in characteristics of gear sound. But it has been difficult to discriminate the symptoms on the surface of gear teeth using the sound of gears in operation. Authors suggested that the information about the surface failure might be obtainable by observing the frequency fluctuation of gear sound, and made a measuring system based on this information. In this paper the pitting tests are performed and the sounds of gears are measured at several numbers of load cycles. The scoring tests are also performed. The changes of the frequency fluctuation of gear sounds are introduced according to the failure growing. As a conclusion it can be said that the results by this new analyzing method revealed that a lot of information could be obtained about running conditions of gears, and that it is possible to open up a new field in detecting the gear surface failure.