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Gear Fault Classification Using the Vibration Signal Decomposition and

Neural Networks

Chapter · December 2020

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-64719-3_53

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 Gear Fault Classification Using the Vibration
Signal Decomposition and Neural Networks

Nguyen Trong Du(&) and Nguyen Phong Dien

School of Mechanical Engineering, Hanoi University of Science and

Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam
du.nguyentrong@hust.edu.vn

Abstract. This paper proposes a new procedure for classification of gear faults
such as normal gear (NG), chipped gear (CG), broken gear (BG), and synthesis
fault (SF) using a multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLP network).
Measured vibration signals are processed by the wavelet packet transform
(WPT) with the Daubechies wavelet function. The standard deviation of wavelet
packet coefficients, called feature vector, achieved from WPT is one of the most
significant parameters to fault classification. In this study, the wavelet packet
decomposition applied up to the four levels, giving 16 signal coefficients with
their corresponding standard deviations used as 16 input of MLP network. There
are four neurons of the output layer in the MLP network obtained from four gear
faults. The classification result shows that the proposed approach can be used to
detect and identify gear faults in transmission system automatically.

Keywords: Gear fault classification
Artificial intelligence
WPT

decomposition

1 Introduction

The gear is one of the most critical elements in the power-train system. It is used to
change the speed and torque of the machine. The working efficiency will be reduced
when the gear is damaged and generates abnormal transient signals during the oper-
ation conditions. Earlier research on fault diagnosis was focused on the use of a time-
domain or frequency domain to detect different types of fault conditions. However, in
recent years, vibration signal analysis techniques have been widely developed, such as
Short-Time Fourier transform [1], time-frequency analysis [2], continuous wavelet
transform [3], discrete wavelet transforms [4], Wavelet Packet Transform [5]. These
analytic methods usually use vibration as input signals for fault detection. Recent
research trends focus on developing a diagnostic system that works automatically with
the application of artificial intelligence (ANN) [6] and support vector machine [7]. In
this study concentrates on a new procedure using a Multi-Layer Perceptron network to
classify gear fault following three steps:
Step 1: The preprocessing of vibration signals to generate with a synchronized
signal based on Piecewise Cubic Hermite Interpolation (P.C.H.I) [8]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

K.-U. Sattler et al. (Eds.): ICERA 2020, LNNS 178, pp. 478–484, 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64719-3_53
 Gear Fault Classification Using the Vibration Signal Decomposition 479

Step 2: Perform WPT with a synchronized signal to generate wavelet packet

coefficients. Then take the standard deviation of these coefficients to create a feature
vector
Step 3: Using feature vector as inputs to the MLP network to classify gear fault
The proposed approach has many advantages in detecting and classification mixed
fault in the gearbox. The results of this study promise to bring a classification of many
different types of gear faults, such as a broken tooth with a chipped tooth.

2 Vibration Signal Decomposition and Neural Networks

Using WPT, the vibration signal can be decomposed into a hierarchical structure with
wavelet details and approximations at various levels as follows:

X
j
f ðt Þ ¼ Di ðtÞ þ Ai ðtÞ ð1Þ
i¼1

Where Di(t) denotes the wavelet detail, and Aj(t) stands for the wavelet approxi-
mation at the jth level (example with four levels as shown in Fig. 1). WPT [5] is a
generalization of wavelet decomposition that offers a more abundant range of possi-
bilities for signal analysis. It contains a complete set of decompositions and details at
every level. A wavelet packet is a function with three indices of integers, i, j, and k,
which are the modulation, scale, and translation parameters, respectively [9]:
 
wij;k ðtÞ ¼ 2j=2 w j 2 j t  k ; i ¼ 1; 2; 3; . . . ð2Þ

The original signal f(t) after j level of decomposition can be stated as:

X
2j
f ðt Þ ¼ fji ðtÞ ð3Þ
i¼1

where fji ðtÞ can be calculated as follow:

X
1
fji ðtÞ ¼ cij;k ðtÞwij;k ðtÞ ð4Þ
k¼1

The wavelet packet coefficients cij;k ðtÞ can be obtained from:

Z1
cij;k ðtÞ ¼ f ðtÞwij;k ðtÞdt ð5Þ
1

j;k ðtÞwj;k ðtÞ ¼ 0; if m 6¼ n.

If the wavelet packet functions are orthogonal: wm n
480 N. T. Du and N. P. Dien

Fig. 1. Decomposition tree of synchronized vibration signals

Artificial neural networks, which are also called parallel distributed processing
systems or connectionist systems, are made of simple processing units called neurons.
The most popular neural network is the MLP with three-layer: an input layer, a hidden
layer, and an output layer, as shown in Fig. 2. Training the network to perform fault
diagnosis was performed offline. Therefore, more training data are preferred over using
inadequate training data to accomplish greater network accuracy. The most common
method to identify defects of mechanical systems is to use the energy of wavelet
coefficients as the feature vector to train the neural networks.

Fig. 2. MLP neural network

3 Experimental Demonstration

The experiments were carried out at a gearbox test rig, as shown in Fig. 3. The test is
conducted to investigate the influence of different gear faults on the measured accel-
eration of the gearbox casing and the feasibility of the diagnostic procedure for gear
fault detection and recognition. The gearbox has three shafts, an input shaft, an idler
shaft, and an output shaft, each with an input side and output side bearing, and a total of
six gears, one on the input shaft, two on the idler shaft, and one on the output shaft. The
 Gear Fault Classification Using the Vibration Signal Decomposition 481

frequency ratio of the input, idler, and output shafts is 15:5:3. The measurement was
taken with two accelerometers positioned at the closest position to the bearings in the
axial direction. The helical gear of 24 teeth was tested under four different health
configurations, as indicated in Fig. 4. For the fourth case of the test condition (SF), the
greatest bend deflection between the centerline axis of the input shaft and the shaft axis
of rotation is about 2 mm, and localized defects cause the bearing fault on the outer
race.

Fig. 3. Configuration of the gearbox used to generate vibration data

Fig. 4. Component health by case

The number of data-points per each shaft revolution changes since the shaft speed
fluctuates (see Fig. 5 left). To overcome this drawback, resampling the measured signal
using P.C.H.I in each shaft revolution to create synchronized signals.
The raw and synchronized signals have been depicted in the left and right of Fig. 5,
respectively, after implementing P.C.H.I. After the synchronization of signals per each
revolution, mining of feature vector was performed as extracting characteristic features
from vibration signals is the essential and foremost concern in fault detection and
diagnosis systems [10].
482 N. T. Du and N. P. Dien

Fig. 5. Raw vibration signals recorded at different idler shaft speeds (left) and synchronized
vibration signals with one revolution of idler shaft (right)

Any of the obtained signals were divided into 38 equal partitions, respectively 38
revolutions of idler shaft, to each of which wavelet packet was applied up to the fourth
level in Fig. 1, thus giving 16 signal coefficients. The wavelet packet coefficients and
their corresponding standard deviations for one partition of chipped gear fault sampled
at the second configuration are shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6. Wavelet packet coefficients and their relevant standard deviation

As mentioned previously, the 16 standard deviations of the wavelet signal coeffi-

cients for every partition of sampled data were applied to the network as the input layer.
For each gear fault condition, we have matrices 38  16 standard deviation. The
training system required four different output mapping vector: three output neurons for
three faulty gear conditions, one output neuron for synthesis fault. MLP networks are
trained with the Back Propagation [11] algorithm for 16 input layer and four output
layer, as shown in Fig. 6. Divide 38 input data sets for each gear condition into 28 data
sets for training, 5 data sets for network validation, and 5 data sets for testing. Flow-
chart for training and testing of the fault identification system, as shown in the left and
right of Fig. 7, respectively.
 Gear Fault Classification Using the Vibration Signal Decomposition 483

Fig. 7. Flowchart for training (left) and testing (right)

The training result achieved 100%, and the testing result achieved 98,5% correct
gear fault classification, as shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8. Training results achieved 100%, and testing results achieved 98,5% correct classification
system
484 N. T. Du and N. P. Dien

4 Conclusions

The present study deals with applying a diagnostic procedure for automatically
detecting and classifying gear faults, based on the methods of WPT and ANN. The
following concluding remarks are reached.
– The WPT can be seen as a suitable signal processing tool to extract diagnostic
features vector for gearboxes.
– A gearbox test rig has experimentally verified the proposed procedure. As can be
seen from the obtained results, the usefulness and effectiveness of the WPT and
ANN for gear fault detection and classification are apparent. A continued investi-
gation of this procedure is therefore highly recommended.

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