Crack detection for spur gears with asymmetric teeth based on the dynamic transmission error

Gears are one of the most important power transmission elements in every area of the industry. Because of its importance, the gear design must be carefully performed. Unfortunately, due to the changing of the boundary conditions, gears are exposed to failures such as cracks, pitting, tooth missing etc. during the operation. Thus the gear diagnostic and monitoring become a very critical phenomenon for the gearboxes. A dynamic transmission error (DTE) based numerical fault detection model is proposed. Firstly, numerical finite element model is created to calculate single tooth stiffness with different crack levels. Furthermore, the model is used for the asymmetric gear profile which has a great importance nowadays for different areas. After that, the time-varying mesh stiffness is calculated by using single tooth stiffness with different crack levels for both symmetric and asymmetric types of the gears. To understand the effects of the gear cracks along the tooth thickness on dynamic transmission error of the gear system and to detect the gear crack faults for symmetric and asymmetric gear profiles, a four-degree of freedom dynamic model is created. The results show that with the increment of the crack level, the mesh stiffness of the gears is decreased. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.