Wear Particle Analysis Results for Variably Loaded Single Reduction Helical Gearboxes

摘要

The Mechanical Diagnostic Test Bed (MDTB) was constructed as a multisensor instrumented gear/transmission test stand by the Pennsylvania State University in the area of Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM). The MDTB data acquisition system is capable of recording (using PC-LabWindows) transitional run-to-failure data sets from a variety of commensurate and non-commensurate (vibration, oil, temperature, and acoustic emission) sensors. Off-line JOAP oil analysis results (ferrography) for samples collected from industrial grade (off- the-shelf) single-pair helical gearboxes subjected to sustained output loads of 2-3 times their rated maximum torque are presented. The off-line oil ferrography results indicated a much higher sliding and cutting wear particle content for the higher loaded (3X maximum torque) experiments. This agrees with intuition. One of the goals of this research is to fuse oil sensor information on lubricant condition in an on-line manner with vibration (accelerometer) data as well as with acoustic emission and thermographic sensor data in order to effectively detect developing or incipient faults, and to predict (with confidence bounds) the remaining useful life of the system (gearbox).