Vibration monitoring is widely used to determine the condition of various mechanical systems. Traditionally a transducer is attached to the structure under investigation and the vibration signal recorded. This signal is then processed and the required information extracted from the signal. With epicyclic gearboxes this traditional approach is not advisable. This is in part due to the fact that the planet gears rotate internally on a planet carrier. Special techniques are therefore required to extract a viable data signal from the measured vibration signal. These techniques require an additional post-processing step in which a compiled data signal is extracted from the measured data signal. This work investigates the possibility of mounting transducers internally on the rotating planet carrier. Mounting transducers at this location removes the relative motion seen in traditional measurement techniques. An epicyclic gearbox is modified to facilitate the internal mounting of the accelerometers. A number of implementation problems are highlighted and solutions to these problems are discussed. A large portion of the work is dedicated to implementing and qualifying the epicyclic time synchronous averaging technique which is traditionally used to evaluate epicyclic gearboxes. As this technique forms the basis to evaluate the data obtained from internal measurements, it is of fundamental importance that the technique is implemented correctly. It is shown that vibration data can be reliably measured internally, by means of accelerometers mounted on the planet carrier. The internally measured data is compared to data obtained by traditional techniques and shown to be equally adept in detecting deterioration of a planet gear tooth. Simple condition indicators were used to compare the vibration data of the two techniques. It was seen that the data obtained from the internally mounted accelerometers was equally, and in certain cases, slightly more sensitive to planet gear damage. This implies that the technique can be used successfully to evaluate epicyclic gearbox damage. There are a number of practical implementation problems that will limit the use of this technique. As the technology becomes available to transmit measured vibration signals wirelessly, the application of the internal measurement technique will become more viable. A preliminary investigation was also launched into the relationship between a planetary gearbox with a single planet gear and one with multiple planet gears. It is illustrated that vibration data, measured from a gearbox containing a single planet gear, shows an increased sensitivity to planet gear damage. Although a special test rig might be required, the increased sensitivity to damage can provide a method to test planet gears in critical applications such as aircraft gearboxes. Copyright / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering / unrestricted

This thesis project is conducted in collaboration with Swepart Transmission AB, aimed to dynamically simulate the compact gearbox design with planetary gears meant to be used in robots. The primary objective of this project is to analyze operational principles of planetary gears and their suitability for mitigating lost motion (backlash). Simulations have been carried out using MSC Adams software where the input speed is 1400 rpm on the pinion gear, which is equal to 1100 deg/s when applied to the sun gear. An adjustment gear is mounted atop sun gear, which is used to adjust the position of the planet gears and it is locked with different variations of 0, 5 and 10 degrees of angular displacement to adjust the planet gears. Additionally, one of the planet gears is selected and the position of teeth in that planet gear is deviated by 10, 20, 30 and 40 micrometers and these new gears are then placed in position of the existing planet gear one by one. These models are then simulated to study the variations and effects of angular velocity on the ring gears, angular velocity of the adjustment gear, displacement in radial direction of the planet gear after it is adjusted, force and torque generated on contact between the planet gear and the ring gear over a period of 5 seconds using 1000 time steps.

This thesis aims to use vibration and acoustic noise analysis to help a production line of a certain motor type to ensure good quality. Noise from the gearbox is sometimes present and the way it is detected is with a human listening to it. This type of error detection is subjective, and it is possible for human error to be present. Therefore, an automatic test that pass or fail the produced Brush Less Direct Current (BLDC)-motors is wanted. Two measurement setups were used. One was based on an accelerometer which was used for vibration measurements, and the other based on a microphone for acoustic sound measurements. The acquisition and analysis of the measurements were implemented using the data acquisition device, compactDAQ NI 9171, and the graphical programming software, NI LabVIEW. Two methods, i.e., power spectrum analysis and machine learning, were used for the analyzing of vibration and acoustic signals, and identifying faults in the gearbox. The first method based on the Fast Fourier transform (FFT) was used to the recorded sound from the BLDC-motor with the integrated planetary gearbox to identify the peaks of the sound signals. The source of the acoustic sound is from a faulty planet gear, in which a flank of a tooth had an indentation. Which could be measured and analyzed. It sounded like noise, which can be used as the indications of faults in gears. The second method was based on the BLDC-motors vibration characteristics and uses supervised machine learning to separate healthy motors from the faulty ones. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is the suggested machine learning algorithm and 23 different features are used. The best performing model was a Coarse Gaussian SVM, with an overall accuracy of 92.25 % on the validation data.