Planetary gearbox condition monitoring of ship-based satellite communication antennas using ensemble multiwavelet analysis method

Satellite communication antennas are key devices of a measurement ship to support voice, data, fax and video integration services. Condition monitoring of mechanical equipment from the vibration measurement data is significant for guaranteeing safe operation and avoiding the unscheduled breakdown. So, condition monitoring system for ship-based satellite communication antennas is designed and developed. Planetary gearboxes play an important role in the transmission train of satellite communication antenna. However, condition monitoring of planetary gearbox still faces challenges due to complexity and weak condition feature. This paper provides a possibility for planetary gearbox condition monitoring by proposing ensemble a multiwavelet analysis method. Benefit from the property on multi-resolution analysis and the multiple wavelet basis functions, multiwavelet has the advantage over characterizing the non-stationary signal. In order to realize the accurate detection of the condition feature and multi-resolution analysis in the whole frequency band, adaptive multiwavelet basis function is constructed via increasing multiplicity and then vibration signal is processed by the ensemble multiwavelet transform. Finally, normalized ensemble multiwavelet transform information entropy is computed to describe the condition of planetary gearbox. The effectiveness of proposed method is first validated through condition monitoring of experimental planetary gearbox. Then this method is used for planetary gearbox condition monitoring of ship-based satellite communication antennas and the results support its feasibility. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.