Defect diagnosis of high contact ratio spur gear system with increasing level of fault

Breakage of tooth is common in power transmission gear systems with continuous running. Model of a system (virtual prototype) serves as a tool for generating large amount of data and can replace expensive experimentation. Dependability of a model depends on the purpose for which the data is generated. Two models of spur gear system are considered in this work: (1) block diagram-based planer kinematics model of spur gear system developed in Simulink environment which does not consider the support and torsional effects and (2) detailed CAD based multibody dynamics model (includes bearings, drive, coupling, connecting rod and supports) that considers backlash, axial and torsional effects developed using MBS ADAMS software. A custom-made high contact ratio gear system is fabricated for experiments. The time and frequency domain characteristics of experimental and simulated signals are compared to draw the conclusions of fault related symptom of the systems with increasing level of faults and the utility of models.