Detecting Gear Tooth Breakage Using Acoustic Emission: a Feasibility and Sensor Placement Study

Vibration and debris monitoring methods are being increasingly used to detect gear tooth breakage. In this paper an alternate method of detecting gear tooth cracking is investigated. It is based on the phenomenon of acoustic emission (AE). The detectability of growing cracks using AE is established. Before this method can be used to detect crack growth in real systems, the transmissibility of these waves has to be studied. These waves have to propagate across a number of mechanical interfaces as they travel from the source to the sensor. The loss in strength of these waves at various interfaces commonly encountered in mechanical systems is studied in this paper.