Dynamic modeling of spur gear transmission system with evolutive coupling fault of fatigue crack and wear

Parallel shaft spur gear system is widely used in various machineries because of its simple structure, high transmission efficiency and strong adaptability. The health status of spur gear greatly affects the safety and reliability of equipment in service, so it is quite necessary to reveal the evolution law of gear fault and clarify the fault dynamic response. Fatigue crack is a typical gear fault, and it is often accompanied by wear which is generally unavoidable in the life cycle of gear transmission system. The two typical gear faults reduce the meshing stiffness of the gear pair, whereupon a calculation approach of time-varying meshing stiffness for the coupling fault of fatigue crack and wear is proposed. First, the prediction models of fatigue crack and wear are respectively investigated, then a coupling fault evolution model is built by combining them. Using this model, a new approach for calculating the time-varying meshing stiffness is put forward. Via embedding the obtained meshing stiffness into the eight-degree-of-freedom dynamics model of spur gear transmission system as the fault excitation, an evolutive coupling fault dynamics model is constructed. Finally, the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed evolutive fault dynamics model is verified by the experiment on a faulty single-stage gearbox. The proposed model has important guiding significance for the fault diagnosis and prognosis of spur gearbox.