Abstract
In these days, the damage diagnosis from remote administration is demanded as an example of maintenance business. For the reason, many researches have dealt with a damage diagnosis on tooth surface of gears by using vibration or noise data. However, this diagnosis method is difficult to detect an abnormal tooth early on. Therefore, we develop a method to diagnose by using a laser beam from the point of view of remote diagnosis. Our method can be explained as follows. First, a tooth surface is irradiated by a zonal laser beam from oblique direction, and then an irradiated laser beam line is shifted along the height of tooth according to gear revolution. The variations of laser reflection between the initial and the present conditions are compared, and it can estimate a condition on tooth surface such as initial or abnormal abrasion, pitting, spalling, etc. To confirm the validity of our method, pitting experiment was carried out, and at the same time the laser reflection was measured with vibration and noise. As a result, the data of laser reflection revealed occurrence of the pitting more apparently and earlier than that of vibration and noise. Thus, it can be concluded that our method can accurately estimate the condition of tooth surface and sufficiently assess the duration of the gear's life.
