Iterative generalized synchrosqueezing transform for fault diagnosis of wind turbine planetary gearbox under nonstationary conditions

The synchrosqueezing transform can effectively improve the readability of time-frequency representation of mono-component and constant frequency signals. However, for multicomponent and time-variant frequency signals, it still suffers from time-frequency blurs. In order to address this issue, the synchrosqueezing transform is improved using iterative generalized demodulation. Firstly, the complex nonstationary signal is decomposed into mono-components of constant frequency by iterative generalized demodulation. Then, the instantaneous frequency of each mono-component is accurately estimated via the synchrosqueezing transform, by exploiting its merit of enhanced time-frequency resolution. Finally, the time-frequency representation of the original signal is obtained by superposing the time-frequency representations of all the mono-components with restored instantaneous frequency. This proposed method generalizes the synchrosqueezing transform to multi-component and time-variant frequency signals, and it has fine time-frequency resolution and is free of cross-term interferences. The proposed method was validated using both numerically simulated and lab experimental vibration signals of planetary gearboxes under nonstationary conditions. The time-variant planetary gearbox characteristic frequencies were effectively identified, and the gear faults were correctly diagnosed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.