A Reliable Fault Diagnosis Method for a Gearbox System with Varying Rotational Speeds

The vibration signals of gearbox gear fault signatures are informative components that can be used for gearbox fault diagnosis and early fault detection. However, the vibration signals are normally non-linear and non-stationary, and they contain background noise caused by data acquisition systems and the interference of other machine elements. Especially in conditions with varying rotational speeds, the informative components are blended with complex, unwanted components inside the vibration signal. Thus, to use the informative components from a vibration signal for gearbox fault diagnosis, the noise needs to be properly distilled from the informational signal as much as possible before analysis. This paper proposes a novel gearbox fault diagnosis method based on an adaptive noise reducer–based Gaussian reference signal (ANR-GRS) technique that can significantly reduce noise and improve classification from a one-against-one, multiclass support vector machine (OAOMCSVM) for the fault types of a gearbox. The ANR-GRS processes the shaft rotation speed to access and remove noise components in the narrowbands between two consecutive sideband frequencies along the frequency spectrum of a vibration signal, enabling the removal of enormous noise components with minimal distortion to the informative signal. The optimal output signal from the ANR-GRS is then extracted into many signal feature vectors to generate a qualified classification dataset. Finally, the OAOMCSVM classifies the health states of an experimental gearbox using the dataset of extracted features. The signal processing and classification paths are generated using the experimental testbed. The results indicate that the proposed method is reliable for fault diagnosis in a varying rotational speed gearbox system.