Detection of gear faults by decomposition of matched differences of vibration signals

This paper describes a series of seeded fault tests performed on the double-helical gears in a marine gearbox and presents analyses of the vibration signals measured at two locations on the gearbox for each of five faults. It is shown that by applying recently developed techniques for the matching of consecutive synchronous averages and for the decomposition of synchronous averages into their components, clear indications of all but one of the sets of seeded faults can be obtained. (C) 2000 Academic Press.