Vibration-Based Detection of Bearing Damages in a Planetary Gearbox Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Tapered roller bearings are used partly in very rough and highly stressful environmental conditions. Therefore, the need for condition monitoring is increasing. This study is intended to provide an approach for monitoring bearings in a two-stage planetary gearbox based on vibration analysis. In total, the data of six damage phenomena and one healthy bearing are collected. A convolutional neural network (CNN) is trained and evaluated by using the balanced accuracy. Mainly, it is investigated how many damage severities can be detected. In addition, the robustness of the model regarding unknown speeds and damage phenomena should be proven. The results show a very good differentiation up to all of the presented damage phenomena. The classifier reaches an averaged balanced accuracy of 0.96. Also, samples collected at unknown speeds can be classified well for speed values within the known range. For unknown damage phenomena, the classifier shows limits so that a reliable classification is only applicable with a binary classifier, which differentiates between healthy and damaged. The investigations therefore show that a reliable detection of bearing damage is possible in a two-stage planetary gear. Furthermore, the transferability of the model is successfully tested and implemented for the binary classifier.