Vibration diagnosis is one of the most common techniques in condition evaluation of wind turbine equipped with gearbox. On the other side, gearbox is one of the key components of wind turbine drivetrain. Due to the stochastic operation of wind turbines, the gearbox shaft rotating speed changes with high percentage, which limits the application of traditional vibration signal processing techniques, such as fast Fourier transform. This paper investigates a new approach for wind turbine high speed shaft gear fault diagnosis using discrete wavelet transform and time synchronous averaging. First, the vibration signals are decomposed into a series of subbands signals with the use of a multiresolution analytical property of the discrete wavelet transform. Then, 22 condition indicators are extracted from the TSA signal, residual signal, and difference signal. Through the case study analysis, a new approach reveals the most relevant condition indicators based on vibrations that can be used for high speed shaft gear spalling fault diagnosis and their tracking abilities for fault degradation progression. It is also shown that the proposed approach enhances the gearbox fault diagnosis ability in wind turbines. The approach presented in this paper was programmed in Matlab environment using data acquired on a 2 MW wind turbine.

In this paper, the direct current (DC) offset cancellation and S transform-based diagnosis method is verified using three case studies. For DC offset cancellation, correlated kurtosis (CK) is used instead of the cross-correlation coefficient in order to determine the optimal iteration number. Compared to the cross-correlation coefficient, CK enhances the DC offset cancellation ability enormously because of its excellent periodic impulse signal detection ability. Here, it has been proven experimentally that it can effectively diagnose the implanted bearing fault. However, the proposed method is less effective in the case of simultaneously present bearing and gear faults, especially for extremely weak bearing faults. In this circumstance, the iteration number of DC offset cancellation is determined directly by the high-speed shaft gear mesh frequency order. For the planetary gearbox, the application of the proposed method differs from the fixed-axis gearbox, because of its complex structure. For those small fault frequency parts, such as planet gear and ring gear, the DC offset cancellation’s ability is less effective than for the fixed-axis gearbox. In these studies, the S transform is used to display the time-frequency characteristics of the DC offset cancellation processed results; the performances are evaluated, and the discussions are given. The fault information can be more easily observed in the time-frequency contour than the frequency domain.

Paper addresses the implementation of feature based artificial neural networks and self-organized feature maps with the vibration analysis for the purpose of automated faults identification in rotating machinery. Unlike most of the research in this field, where a single type of fault has been treated, the research conducted in this paper deals with rotating machines with multiple faults. Combination of different roller elements bearing faults and different gearbox faults is analyzed. Experimental work has been conducted on a specially designed test rig. Frequency and time domain vibration features are used as inputs to fault classifiers. A complete set of proposed vibration features are used as inputs for self-organized feature maps and based on the results they are used as inputs for supervised artificial neural networks. The achieved results show that proposed set of vibration features enables reliable identification of developing bearing and gear faults in geared power transmission systems.

This paper provides a review of the literature, progress and changes over the years on fault detection of gears using vibration signal processing techniques. Analysis of vibration signals generated by gear in mesh has shown its usefulness in industrial gearbox condition monitoring. Vibration measurement provides a very efficient way of monitoring the dynamic conditions of a machine such as gearbox. Various vibration analysis methods have been proposed and applied to gear fault detection. Most of the traditional signal analysis techniques are based on the stationary assumption. Such techniques can only provide analyses in terms of the statistical average in the time or frequency domain, but can not reveal the local features in both time and frequency domains simultaneously. Frequency/quefrency analysis, time/statistical analysis, time-frequency analysis and cyclostationarity analysis are reviewed in regard for stationary and nonstationary operation. The use of vibration signal processing detection techniques is classified and discussed. The capability of each technique, fundamental principles, advantages and disadvantages and practical application for gear faults detection have been examined by literature review.