Tooth Root Crack Detection of Planet Gear in RV Re PDF

Journal of Physics: Conference Series
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14th International Conference on Damage Assessment of Structures IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 2184 (2022) 012019 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/2184/1/012019
Tooth root crack detection of planet gear in RV reducer based

on improved compute order tracking and angular domain
synchronous averaging
Y H Yan1, Y Guo1, 2 , X Q Liu1

1
No. 727, Jingming South Road, Chenggong District, Kunming, Yunnan, China
2
Corresponding Author. Email: kmgary@163.com
Abstract. Rotate vector (RV) reducers are widely used as the joints of industrial robots. Due to
RV reducers often work in a reciprocating condition, it makes the corresponding vibration for
fault detection is incomplete since the incompletely rotation of the output shaft. Thus,
traditional methods such as the vibration separation (VS) cannot be used to detect the tooth
fault of planet gear in RV reducer. Moreover, few literatures reported the tooth fault detection
of RV reducer without disassembly. To address this issue, a method for detecting the planet
gear tooth root crack fault of RV reducers is proposed in this paper. It combines the improved
compute order tracking (ICOT), the signal extraction and reconstruction of planet gear, and the
synchronous averaging (SA). The ICOT is utilized to obtain data blocks of each tooth of the
gear on the reference shaft while eliminating the inevitable speed fluctuations. Subsequently,
the tooth mapping relationship between the planet gear and sun gear can be calculated by the
planetary meshing structure. Then, the data block of each tooth of the planet gear can be
extracted from the resampled vibration. Next, data blocks of the planet gear can be constructed
into a synthetic signal according to the tooth mapping relationship. Furthermore, the SA is
applied to enhance the signal-noise ratio (SNR) of the synthetic signal. Finally, spectral
analysis is utilized to expose the fault characteristics. The comparative experiment with the
normal and faulty planet gear in an RV reducer test rig validated the effectiveness of the
proposed method.
1. Introduction
Recently, with the increasing popularity of industrial automation, industrial robots are widely used in
this field. Rotate vector (RV) reducers are the key mechanical part and are used as the joints. Similar
to other common gearboxes that used in applications, RV reducers are going to fail since the growth of
service time. In particular, as industrial robots are usually installed on production lines, health status of
RV reducers are always desired to avoid sudden failure occurs [1]. To this end, it attracts many
researchers to perform the fault detection of industrial robots.
To detect the fault feature of RV reducers before it caused an accident, researchers tried to
investigate various signal processing methods of fault diagnosis about RV reducers. A torsional
vibration test method is proposed to recognize the manufacturing defects in the reducer’s mechanical
components in [2]. A noise deep convolution neural model (NOSCNN) is provided in [3] to identify
the failure of RV reducers. An intelligent condition monitoring system is established to diagnose the
most common faults of industrial robot joints in [4], it is based on the discrete wavelet transform
(DWT) and the artificial neural network (ANN). An encoder signal-based health monitoring system is
presented in [5] for industrial robots, which used the singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and the Hilbert
transform (HT). It should be noted that most above methods proposed for RV reducers fault diagnosis
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are based on feature recognition, neural network, and deep learning. And only few methods for fault
diagnosis of RV reducers are based on the acoustic emission (AE) technique. An AE signal
propagation model is proposed in [6], [7] that used for fault diagnosis of RV reducers. An AE-based
time difference of arrival (TDOA) location technique is provided in [8] for detecting the failure of RV
reducers. A fault diagnosis method based on AE signal for detection of the bearing fault of an RV
reducer installed on a welding robot is proposed in [1]. The effectiveness of AE technique in fault
detection of RV reducers has been verified by the aforementioned researches. However, due to the
high cost of AE technique, the vibration-based fault detection methods are still the dominant since it
has been well developed and validated in the field of rotating machinery. However, affected by
industrial robots characteristic of reciprocating rotation and time-varying transfer path, few vibration-
based studies are found on the fault detection technology of RV reducers. These issues make the
application of vibration-based methods for fault detection of RV reducers is still a challenge.
Compared with the structure of planetary gearboxes, RV reducers have the same sun-planet gear
meshing system. It means that the studies on fault detection technology of planetary gearboxes can
guide the similar study on the RV reducer. Where, a vibration separation-based method that combines
the advantage of resonance demodulation is proposed in [9]. A continuous vibration separation method
combines with the minimum entropy de-convolution is provided in [10]. An angle domain windowed
synchronous average method that combines envelope technology is carried out to detect the fault of
planetary gearboxes in [11]. It should be noted that the conventional vibration separation technology is
proposed in [12-14] firstly. Although the above methods are not usable for fault detection of RV
reducers, they do provide useful guidance.
A method that combining the improved compute order tracking and angular domain synchronous
averaging is proposed in this paper for the tooth root crack detection of planet gear in RV reducers. It
combines the advantages that vibration data blocks of each tooth of the gear on the reference shaft can
be obtained by the ICOT while eliminating the “frequency blur” caused by speed fluctuation. And the
planet gear vibration signal extraction and reconstruction based on sun-planet gear meshing regularity
reduce the effect of time-varying vibration transfer paths. And irrelevant signal interference can be
suppressed by the SA. Experimental results of a RV reducer test rig support the effectiveness of
proposed method positively.
The structure of this paper is organized as follows. Firstly, the internal structure and planet gear
meshing regularity of the RV reducer are introduced in Section 2. Then, the theories of improved
compute order tracking (ICOT), planet gear signal extraction and reconstruction, and synchronous
averaging (SA) are detailed in Section 3. Subsequently, the schematic of the proposed method is listed
in detail in Section 4. Furthermore, the comparative experiment with the normal and faulty planet gear
of tooth root crack in an RV reducer test rig is presented in Section 5. And finally, it drew to
summarize the conclusion of the whole paper in Section 6.
2. Time-varying transfer path and sun-planet gear meshing analysis

In RV reducers, it has a two-stage gear meshing system, which combining the sun-planet gear meshing
and cycloid gear meshing. Thanks to the special structure, which makes RV reducers achieved the
ability of high-speed reducing ratio, heavy load capability, and accurate motion transmission. The
schematic of the transmission scheme in a typical RV reducer is shown in figure 1, which consists of
one sun gear, several planet gears, several crankshaft, two cycloid gears, several pin-teeth, and one
ring gear. The power input shaft is connected to the sun gear, and the output is realized by the rotation
of ring gear or cycloid gears.
The explanation of the serial number in figure 1 is as follows: 1. Sun gear, 2. Input shaft, 3. Planet
gear, 4. Pin-teeth, 5. Ring gear, 6. Cycloid gear, 7. Output shaft, 8. Crankshaft.
2
Figure 1. Schematic of a typical RV reducer.
2.1 Influence of time-varying transfer path in RV reducers

In the unique gear meshing motion structure of RV reducers, it has two-stage gear meshing systems
which can be divided into a planetary meshing structure and a cycloid meshing structure. In the
planetary meshing structure, the sun gear rotates around its centre. Planet gears not only rotate around
their centre but also revolve around the sun gear while holding together by crankshafts. In the cycloid
meshing structure, crankshafts are connected to cycloid gears which revolve around the sun gear.
Meanwhile, the meshing between cycloid gears and the ring gear (through the pin-teeth) makes
cycloid gears rotate around their centre at the same time. So, it means that in each rotation cycle of the
sun gear, the relative location of the sun gear and planet gear, the ring gear and cycloid gears are time-
varying.
Hence, the vibration signal of planet gear in each rotate of the sun gear has a time-varying phase
shift. To detail the time-varying transfer path of RV reducers, the vibration transfer paths are
introduced in figure 2. It can be seen that there are three major transfer paths of the sun-planet
meshing pair in RV reducers.
Figure 2. Signal transfer paths of the sun-planet meshing pair.
3
In path 1, the vibration caused by the sun-planet meshing pair is transferred to the cycloid-ring gear
meshing area according to crankshafts firstly. Then, it picked by the sensor mounted on the RV
reducer according to pin-teeth and the minor arc of the ring gear. In path 2, the vibration is transferred
to the sun gear shaft (input shaft) through the sun gear body directly. And then, it transfers to the
sensor that installed on the servo motor. In path 3, the vibration is transferred to crankshafts firstly.
Subsequently, it transfers to the sensor mounted on the RV reducer passes through the crankshaft
bearing, output shaft, and output shaft bearing sequentially. Undeniable, it still has some other possible
vibration transfer paths. However, comparing with the above paths, which has less dependable. It
should be noted that in the vibration signal analysis of planet gears in RV reducers, path 2 is more
conducive than others to signal processing since the influence of the time-varying transfer path is
minimized by the servo motor which connects to the input shaft directly.
2.2 Meshing regularity and fault features of planet gear in RV reducers

For industrial robots, the ring gear meshing with cycloid gears is part of the case which is fixed to the
support arm. It takes cycloid gears to serve as the output shaft, which connects to the arm to be driven.
In this configuration, after the planet gear rotates one cycle which the cycloid gear rotates one tooth of
the ring gear. Combined with the practical application of industrial robots, it hardly performs full cycle
rotation on the output shaft of RV reducers. So, it takes the sun gear shaft (input shaft) served as the
reference shaft rather than the output shaft is more conducive to signal to process. In every reference
shaft rotation cycle, the sun gear rotates around its centre while planet gears rotate around its centre
and the sun gear centre at the same time, it constitutes the sun-planet meshing system. Therefore, the
characteristic frequency and order of the planet gear in an RV reducer can be calculated based on the
sun-planet meshing system.
It assumed that Ns and Np represent the teeth number of the sun gear and planet gear respectively.
According to the sun-planet gear meshing system transmission theory [15], the meshing frequency of
sun gear will be
fm  Ns f s (1)
where fm and fs denote the meshing frequency of sun gear and the rotational frequency of sun gear
respectively. Then, let the sun gear shaft (input shaft) as the reference shaft, the meshing order of sun
gear can be calculated by
60 f m 60 N s f s
om    Ns (2)
ns 60 f s
where om and ns represent the meshing order of sun gear and the rotational speed of sun gear
respectively. Subsequently, the fault characteristic frequency and order of planet gear with a tooth root
crack in an RV reducer which related to the reference shaft can be calculated by
f p s  f s ( Ns / N p ) (3)
60 f p s 60( f s ( N s / N p )) Ns
ops    (4)
ns 60 f s Np
where fps and ops represent the fault characteristic frequency and order of planet gear in an RV reducer
respectively.
3. Theory and method for the fault detection of planet gear in RV reduces
In this section, the improved compute order tracking, synchronous averaging and planet gear signal
extraction, and reconstruction methods are introduced as follows:
4
3.1 Improved compute order tracking
In applications of rotating machinery, non-stationary condition of vibration signal is inevitable since
the time-varying operating speed and load [16]. It makes the "frequency blur" phenomenon appear in
the spectral analysis of the signal. To reduce the influence of the phenomenon, the compute order
tracking (COT) technology has been proposed and well applied. The key of the COT technology is
equal-angle resampling with a selected reference shaft. It converts the vibration signal from the non-
stationary time domain to the quasi-stationary angular domain. The principle of conventional COT
technology is detailed in [17-19]. However, due to the high gear ratio in RV reducers and rich tacho-
pulse signal provided by the rotary pulse encoder in servo motors, it makes the traditional COT
technology of one pulse per revolution is hardly conducive to perform the equal-angle resampling
more accurately.
To address the issue, the improved compute order tracking (ICOT) method is proposed, in which
the vibration of the interesting gear per each tooth in the selected reference shaft can be equal-angle
resampled. The main idea of the ICOT method contains two points. Firstly, it constructs the tacho-
pulse for the interesting gear per tooth according to the rich tacho-pulse signal provided by the rotary
pulse encoder. In this way, the equal-angle resampling of the interesting gear can be refined to per
tooth. However, it causes the time costs to increase exponentially since all the teeth of the interesting
gear are equal-angle resampled per revolution rather than once per revolution. Hence, the second point
is to reduce the time cost, it used an approximate calculation method to combine the adjacent teeth for
equal-angle resampling. Subsequently, after the ICOT, resampled data blocks of the interesting gear
per tooth of each revolution can be obtained. The schematic of the ICOT method is shown in figure 3,
and main steps are listed as follows:
Figure 3. The schematic of ICOT.

1) The original vibration and tacho-pulse signal acquisition.
The original vibration and tacho-pulse signal are collected synchronously through a vibration
sensor and a key phasor device. In this paper, the key phasor device is the rotary pulse encoder
installed on the servo motor. And the sun gear shaft (input shaft) of the RV reducer is selected as the
reference shaft, which makes the observed rotary pulse encoder signal that can be used for
constructing the tacho-pulse of the sun gear per tooth of each revolution directly.
2) Pre-treatment on the tacho-pulse signal.
In the traditional COT, it is assumed that the reference shaft has the same acceleration state
between each revolution. Then, the original vibration signal per revolution can be equal-angle
resampled according to the polynomial equation that is detailed in [17]. Thus, it makes the original
vibration signal can be equal-angle resampled once per revolution by the COT technology. To
improve it, the raw tacho-pulse signal should be pre-processed. Firstly, it constructs the tacho-pulse
5
sequence of the interesting gear per tooth of each revolution based on the raw tacho-pulse signal
picked up from the rotary pulse encoder. Secondly, it utilizes an approximate calculation method to
construct the teeth pulse sequence by merging the adjacent pulses of constructed tacho-pulse sequence
which are identified as having the same acceleration state. In this paper, it constructs the teeth pulse
sequence of sun gear as the following steps.
(a) Calculation on the pulse number sequence: according to the teeth number of sun gear, the angle
interval Δθ1 of each tooth in every cycle can be calculated. Noted that affected by the sun-planet gear
meshing system, the planet gear is revolving around the sun gear. It makes Δθ1 is smaller than the
meshing angle of each tooth of the sun gear, but it can be calculated by
360 360 360 360
 s  1   2     (5)
N s RN s N s (( N n N p ) / N s  1) N s
where θs is the meshing angle of each tooth of the sun gear, Δθ1 denotes the angle interval of each
tooth of the sun gear, Δθ2 means the residual angle of each tooth of the sun gear which meshes with
the planet gear, and R denotes the gear ratio of an RV reducer. The Ns, Np, and Nn represent the teeth
number of sun gear, planet gear, and ring gear respectively. Next, the angle interval θp of each pulse in
the raw tacho-pulse signal can be calculated by
360
p  (6)
PPR
where θp is the angle interval of each pulse in the raw tacho-pulse signal, PPR represents the number
of pulses per revolution of the rotary pulse encoder installed in the servo motor. Then, the pulse
number sequence of sun gear per tooth of each revolution can be obtained by θs and θp. It contains the
number of encoder pulses for the sun gear per tooth of each revolution. Noted that the number of
encoder pulses for each tooth in pulse number sequence is usually not integer since θs and θp often are
not divisible.
(b) Construction on the tacho-pulse sequence: due to the raw tacho-pulse signal picked by the given
sampling frequency, it makes the data point of each pulse interval can be calculated. Then, the pulse
number sequence can be converted from the number of pulses per tooth to the number of data points
per tooth. Subsequently, the tacho-pulse sequence of sun gear per tooth of each revolution can be
constructed by initializing an array with values of 0 while setting a value of 1 at each pulse point
position.
(c) Difference calculation on the tacho-pulse sequence: due to the constructed tacho-pulse sequence
contains data points of pulse of the sun gear per tooth of each revolution, which can be easily
converted to corresponding time value by the sampling frequency. Then, the time sequence T(i) can be
calculated by difference calculation on these pulses in the form as follows.
T (i)  {(t2  t1 ),(t3  t2 ),(t4  t3 ),...,(t N  t N 1 )} (i  1,2,..., N  1) (7)
where T(i) is the time sequence, which contains the time value of each tooth meshing process. And t1 ~
tN represent the time value of each pulse in the tacho-pulse sequence respectively. Noted that the time
of tN is greater than that of tN-1.
(d) The approximate calculation of the time sequence: generally, the acceleration state of each
tooth of the sun gear during the meshing process is unknown. However, it can be confirmed by
processing on T(i). The percentage sequence Sc(j) can be calculated based on T(i) by
T ( j )  T (1)
Sc( j )   100%   Sc( j  1) ( j  1,2,..., i) (8)
T (1)
where Sc(j) is the percentage sequence, it contains the rate of change of the time increment between
adjacent teeth which changes between -1 and 1. It reflects following regularities of change since the
different acceleration states. Firstly, due to values of T(i) decrease gradually under acceleration state, it
makes values of Sc(j) are less than 0. Secondly, values of T(i) are increasing under deceleration state
6
which makes values of Sc(j) are larger than 0. Moreover, values of Sc(j) will be 0 at a constant speed
state theoretically. Hence, the acceleration state of each tooth of sun gear during the meshing process
can be confirmed.
(e) Construction on the teeth pulse sequence: according to above characteristics of Sc(j), there are
three major states of uniform state, acceleration state, and deceleration state. And the acceleration state
can be divided into uniform acceleration, acceleration increase, and decrease. The deceleration state is
similar to the acceleration state. Noted that it has differences in values of Sc(j) among the three-
acceleration states. Values of Sc(j) are the same under the uniform acceleration state, which less than 0.
If regardless of the negative direction, values of Sc(j) will be increased under the state of acceleration
increase. Moreover, it will be decreased under the state of acceleration decrease. Furthermore, above
characteristics also exist among the three-deceleration states. Values of Sc(j) are the same under the
uniform deceleration state, which larger than 0. It is going to increase under the state of deceleration
increase and going to decrease at the state of deceleration decrease.
However, it hardly has a standard state of uniform speed, uniform acceleration, and uniform
deceleration in applications. To accurately divide the resample area, it constructs a mark sequence by
setting some thresholds and comparing them with Sc(j), e.g., it sets the threshold of ±2% to identify
values of Sc(j) that within the threshold can be marked as the uniform speed state. And in the
acceleration state, it is regardless of the negative direction in threshold comparison. Then, the change
rate of two adjacent values of Sc(j) is within the threshold of ±20%, which can be regarded as has the
same acceleration state. Meanwhile, if it is outside the threshold, which will be regarded as a different
state of acceleration increase or acceleration decrease. Thresholds set of the deceleration state are
similar to the acceleration state. In the mark sequence, the C means uniform speed state, A1~AN denote
different acceleration states and D1~DN represent the different deceleration states respectively. After
the mark sequence obtained, marks of the mark sequence can recur to the tacho-pulse sequence of sun
gear per tooth of each revolution stage-by-stage, which is shown in figure 4.
Figure 4. Recursion on acceleration states.

In figure 4, stages of 1~3 represent the tacho-pulse sequence, the time sequence T(i), and the
percentage sequence Sc(j) respectively. Moreover, stage 4 is the mark sequence, which denotes
different acceleration states of Sc(j). The calculation direction and recursion direction can be seen by
the arrows shown in figure 4. Generally, the change of acceleration state is reflected at the latter since
the calculation starts from the former and ends at the latter. Noted that the mark sequence (stage 4)
shown in figure 4 is arranged as acceleration-uniform speed-deceleration to comply with the working
condition of the RV reducer test rig for example. And the Sc(1) is calculated as 0 since there is no
Sc(0), which makes the first mark of the mark sequence is C. Hence, acceleration states of the tacho-
pulse sequence (stage 1) can be marked recursively. Finally, pulses of meshing teeth with the same
acceleration states can be merged to construct the teeth pulse sequence, which reduces the iterative
number of the polynomial equation
3) Equal-angle resampling.
7
After pre-treatment on the original tacho-pulse signal, the teeth pulse sequence for equal-angle
resampling can be obtained. Then, the original vibration signal can be equal-angle resampled
according to the teeth pulse sequence. Subsequently, resampled vibration data blocks of the sun gear
per tooth of each revolution can be obtained.
3.2 Synchronous averaging

The Synchronous Averaging (SA) technique is a powerful signal processing tool, which can
effectively suppress the irrelevant signal interference except the given periodically. It is usually used
for enhancing the SNR of vibration in complex noise environments. Generally, it has two kinds of
popular SA methods in applications. The first one is the well-known time-synchronous averaging
(TSA), the formula can be expressed as the following
1 N 1
x (t )   x(t  mT )
N m0
(9)
where ̅ means the resulting signal after TSA, N represents total times for averaging, and T indicates
the period for averaging. The schematic of TSA is explained in figure 5. The vibration and tacho-pulse
signal are collected synchronously at first. And then, the periodic time of each cycle can be extracted
from the tacho-pulse signal. Subsequently, the vibration signal can be divided into data blocks that
have the same phase according to all the extracted periodic time. Next, data blocks are accumulated
and averaged to enhance the periodic components while suppressing irrelevant interference. After the
TSA method, irrelevant signal other than the selected rotating shaft can be suppressed effectively.
Figure 5. Schematic of conventional TSA.

On the other hand, the second one that commonly SA methods is the rotation domain average
(RDA), which is proposed according to the conventional TSA method. It addresses the problem of
TSA can be heavily distorted or even meaningless caused by the insignificant speed fluctuations of the
selected rotating shaft. The principle of RDA is similar to TSA, which is used for averaging data
blocks that are composed by the angle domain vibration signal generated from the equal-angle
resampling. It makes the RDA can be applied in conditions under-speed fluctuations effectively. The
formula of RDA can be expressed as in [16] by
1 N 1
y ( )   y(  n )
N n 0
(10)
where ̅ θ means the resulting signal after RDA, N represents the total times for averaging, Δθ
indicates the period in angle for averaging. However, it should be noted that the SA method (including
TSA and RDA) cannot be utilized on the original vibration signal of RV reducers directly since the
time-varying phase shift caused by the time-varying vibration transfer path. This means the observed
vibration should be pre-processed before the SA method performs on suppressing irrelevant signal
interference.
8
3.3 The planet gear signal extraction and reconstruction
As aforementioned above in Section 2, the first stage of RV reducers is the unique planetary meshing
motion structure. The sun gear rotates around its center while planet gears rotate around its center and
revolve around the sun gear synchronously. It means that the vibration signal picked up from RV
reducers for the fault detection of planet gear is affected by the time-varying vibration transfer path.
The condition is similar to that of planetary gearboxes, which makes the conventional methods cannot
be utilized directly to expose the fault feature of planet gears.
In planetary gearboxes to address this issue, the vibration separation technology is proposed in [12-
14] which has the outstanding advantage in reducing the interference of the time-varying phase shift
caused by the time-varying vibration transfer path. However, the method cannot be applied for the
fault detection of planet gear in RV reducers since the reciprocating work state. Due to rotations of the
output shaft in RV reducers is incomplete, which makes the vibration data of the output shaft for
vibration separation can hardly be provided sufficiently. Fortunately, the idea of signal extraction and
reconstruction is usable for the fault detection of planet gear in RV reducers since the sun-planet
meshing system of RV reducers and planetary gearboxes are the same.
To obtain the vibration signal of planet gear in RV reducers according to the mentioned idea, two
major problems should be carefully considered: Firstly, the meshing tooth sequence needs to be
calculated for providing the tooth mapping relationship between the sun and planet gear. Secondly,
vibration data blocks of sun gear per tooth of each revolution should be obtained. Then, the vibration
signal of planet gear can be reconstructed indirectly according to vibration data blocks of sun gear per
tooth of each revolution and the meshing tooth sequence. The process is detailed as follows.
1) Calculation on the teeth meshing sequence.
In planetary gearboxes, the planet carrier (output shaft) is selected as the reference shaft, which
makes the teeth meshing sequence of planet gear which relates to a fixed position in the ring gear can
be calculated by the meshing process of the ring gear and planet gear. In RV reducers, due to the
above idea, it selects the sun gear shaft (input shaft) as the reference shaft, which lets the teeth
meshing sequence can be calculated by the meshing process of the sun gear and planet gear. The
difference between the above cases is that the sun and the planet gear of RV reducers are meshing
continuously during the operation. It makes the teeth meshing sequence can be calculated directly
based on the rotations of sun gear. Assuming Ns and Np represent the teeth number of the sun gear and
planet gear while Np > Ns. Then, the minimum number of rotation Sg of the sun gear shaft which
contains Np can be calculated by
S g  ceil( N s N p ) (11)
where ceil(x) means rounding x to the nearest integer greater than or equal to x. After Sg calculated, it
assumes that the gear teeth have been marked, then the teeth meshing sequence Nmesh can be calculated
as follows.
Nmesh  mod(aNs , N p )  b (a  0,1,2,...)(b  1,2,..., N s ) (12)
where mod(x, y) means calculating the remainder of x and y. Nmesh is a matrix composed of the
revolution number of sun gear, its teeth number marks, and the teeth meshing mark of planet gear.
2) The vibration data block of each tooth of planet gear obtaining.
After the ICOT method, resampled data blocks of the sun gear per tooth of each revolution can be
obtained. Subsequently, it marks each gear tooth of the sun gear firstly, and then resampled data
blocks are arranged by the marks. Next, it marks each gear tooth of the planet gear that meshing with
the sun gear. Hence, the mapping relationship between tooth marks of the sun gear and planet gear can
be confirmed in Nmesh. Subsequently, vibration data blocks of the planet gear per tooth of each
revolution can be extracted from resampled data blocks of the sun gear according to the teeth mapping
relationship. Assuming that resampled data blocks of the sun gear per tooth of each revolution are
known as sequence X, vibration data blocks of the planet gear per tooth of each revolution Y can be
extracted from X based on Nmesh by
(e, f )  Nmesh (cd ) (13)
9
Y (c, d )  X (e, f ) (14)

where c and d denote the revolution number and tooth number mark of the planet gear respectively. e
and f represent the revolution number and tooth number mark of the sun gear respectively. And Y(c, d)
means a vibration data block of planet gear under a known number of revolution c and tooth mark d.
Generally, it calculates the cd of planet gear to locate the position in Nmesh firstly. Then, e and f can be
extracted from Nmesh. Subsequently, vibration data blocks of planet gear per tooth of each revolution
can be extracted from the given sequence X.
3) Reconstruction on the planet gear signal.
According to signal extraction of the sun gear based on the meshing regularity, vibration data
blocks of the planet gear per tooth of each revolution can be obtained. Then, vibration data blocks of
the planet gear can be constructed into a complete synthetic gear signal per revolution based on its
tooth number marks. The synthetic gear signal is similar to a vibration observed from a fixed-axis
gearbox.
After above steps, the traditional SA can be performed to suppress the irrelevant interference of
synthetic planet gear signal. Finally, the conventional spectral analysis can be applied to the
synchronous averaged synthetic signal of planet gear to expose the characteristic frequency or order
lines.
4. Fault detection of the planet gear with tooth root crack of RV reducers
By combining advantages that vibration data blocks of the sun gear per tooth of each revolution can be
resampled by the ICOT. And vibration data blocks of the planet gear per tooth of each revolution can
be extracted from the resampled vibration of sun gear. Moreover, irrelevant signal interference can be
effectively suppressed by the SA. A localized planet gear tooth root crack fault detection method for
RV reducers is proposed in this paper, which is shown in figure 6, and main steps of the presented
method are listed as follows:
Figure 6. Schematic of the proposed method.

1) Signal synchronization acquisition.
To facilitate phase matching, the vibration and tacho-pulse signal of RV reducers are collected
synchronously.
2) ICOT-based equal-angle resampling.
10
The equal-angle resampling based on the improved compute order tracking is applied to the
observed vibration signal to obtain resampled vibration data blocks of the sun gear per tooth of each
revolution. It should be noted that the sun gear shaft (input shaft) of RV reducers is selected as the
reference shaft, which makes the observed tacho-pulse signal of the rotary pulse encoder can be used
for constructing the teeth pulse sequence for equal-angle resampling. Then, resampled vibration data
blocks of the sun gear per tooth of each revolution can be obtained.
3) Calculation on the teeth meshing sequence.
According to the sun-planet meshing regularity of RV reducers, the teeth meshing sequence can be
calculated. The procedure of calculation has been detailed in Section 3. The teeth meshing sequence
provides the mapping relationship between the teeth number mark of sun and planet gear. It is used to
locate vibration data blocks of planet gear per tooth of each revolution from resampled data blocks of
the sun gear.
4) Signal extraction and reconstruction of the planet gear, and SA.
Vibration data blocks of the planet gear per tooth of each revolution can be extracted from
resampled data blocks of the sun gear according to the mapping relationship provided by Nmesh.
Subsequently, extracted data blocks are constructed into a complete planet gear signal according to the
teeth meshing sequence. After that, the SA is carried out on the synthetic signal to suppress irrelevant
interference.
5) Feature extraction.
Conventional spectral analysis is carried out on the reconstruction planet gear signal processed by
the SA, which to detect the local gear fault of planet gear in RV reducers.
5. Method experimental verification

In this section, the proposed method is evaluated by the comparative experiment with the normal and
faulty planet gear in an RV reducer test rig. Results show that the proposed method can effectively
detect the tooth root crack of the planet gear. The details of the process are introduced as follows.
5.1 Introduction on the RV reducer test rig

The RV reducer test rig with the normal and faulty planet gear is shown in figure 7. In the experiment,
the RV reducer has driven by a servo motor that running with speed 0–750 rpm. Moreover, the loading
unit is an arm to simulate a robot joint, which is driven by the servo motor for reciprocating motion. In
particular, the reciprocating motion range is from 0°to 80°, and the number of pulses per revolution of
the rotary pulse encoder is 2500.
Figure 7. RV reducer test rig.
11
Gear parameters of the RV reducer are listed in table 1. It selects the sun gear shaft as the reference
shaft, which is also the input shaft of the RV reducer. Then, characteristic features of the meshing
order and planet gear fault order with tooth root crack are calculated based on equation (1) ~ (4) and
listed in table 2.
Table 1. Parameters of RV reducer test rig.
Sun gear Planet gear Cycloid gear Ring gear
Teeth number 12 42 39 40
Table 2. Characteristic orders of the planet gear.
Type Characteristic orders
Meshing order 12.00×
Fault order of tooth root crack 0.29×
For comparison in the experiment, planet gears of normal and faulty with tooth root crack are
mounted in the RV reducer respectively. The tooth root crack of planet gear is processed by wire
cutting. The damaged gear is shown in figure 8.
(a) (b)
Figure 8. Planet gear (a) and its tooth root crack (b).
The teeth meshing sequence Nmesh can be calculated by equation (11) ~ (12), and it is shown in
table 3, where Pn represents the teeth number mark of the sun gear, and Cn is the minimum number of
revolution of the sun gear shaft. Nmesh contains the meshing relationship between the sun gear and the
planet gear.
Table 3. The meshing sequence Nmesh.
Pn Cn 1 2 3 4
1 1 13 25 37
2 2 14 26 38
3 3 15 27 39
4 4 16 28 40
5 5 17 29 41
6 6 18 30 42
7 7 19 31 43(1)
8 8 20 32 44(2)
9 9 21 33 45(3)
10 10 22 34 46(4)
11 11 23 35 47(5)
12 12 24 36 48(6)
In the experiment, the PicoScope-4444 is used for signal acquisition with a sampling rate of 1 MHz.
Noted that the picked tacho-pulse signal of the rotary pulse encoder will be distorted if the sampling
rate is less than 1 MHz. It has two accelerometers of DH112 (frequency range 0.5∼7000 Hz, charge
sensitivity 5.0 pC/ms −2) installed on the RV reducer test rig at two different positions as shown in
figure 7. The vibration signal picked by the sensor that is mounted on the servo motor as shown in
12
figure 7 at position (2) is used in this paper. Vibrations under normal and faulty condition of the RV
reducer are collected respectively.
5.2 Experiment on planet gear with a tooth root crack

It has collected the data in the normal condition of RV reducer for comparison within the faulty
condition of planet gear with tooth root crack. The original vibration signal of the RV reducer under
the normal condition and corresponding instantaneous speed curve are shown in figure 9(a) and (b)
respectively. And the picked original vibration signal in a planet gear tooth root crack condition and
corresponding instantaneous speed curve are shown in figure 10(a) and (b) respectively.
Figure 9. Original vibration signal (a) and instantaneous speed curve (b) of the
RV reducer in the normal condition.
Figure 10. Vibration signal of the RV reducer in the condition of a planet gear
tooth root crack (a) and corresponding instantaneous speed curve (b).
13
Generally, it identifies the fault feature of planet gear with tooth root crack according to the related
sideband cluster, e.g., in this paper, it is 0.29× which around the mesh order and its harmonics.
However, affected by the reciprocating working state of RV reducers, which causes the vibration of
the output shaft, is incomplete. It makes some conventional spectrum analysis methods like vibration
separation cannot be used to detect the teeth fault of the planet gear in RV reducers.
To address the issue, the proposed method is applied. Firstly, it selects the sun gear shaft (input
shaft) of the RV reducer as the reference shaft. Then, the ICOT-based equal-angle resampling is
utilized to obtain resampled data blocks of the sun gear per tooth of each revolution. Subsequently, the
teeth meshing sequence Nmesh is calculated according to the sun-planet meshing regularity, which is
listed in table 3. It provides the mapping relationship of the sun and the planet gear. Thus, positions of
all the teeth of planet gear per revolution can be located. Next, vibration data blocks of the planet gear
per tooth of each revolution are extracted from resampled data blocks of the sun gear based on Nmesh.
Then, vibration data blocks of planet gear are constructed into a synthetic gear signal. The processes
are detailed in Section 3. With the synthetic gear signal obtained, the SA technology is carried out on
the synthetic signal to suppress irrelevant interference. It should be noted that the reciprocating motion
range of the RV reducer is from 0°to 80°in this paper, which makes the planet gear only rotates eight
times completely. In the application, the SA is applied five times on the synthetic planet gear signal,
where each data block for the SA corresponds to four complete revolutions of the planet gear. For
comparison, the synchronous averaged synthetic signal of planet gear in the normal and abnormal
conditions of the RV reducer test rig are shown in figure 11(a) and (b) respectively. From figure 11(b),
the periodic components can be observed, which are corresponding to the tooth root crack. In contrast,
the same periodicity is hardly to be found under the normal condition that shown in figure 11(a).
Figure 11. Synchronous averaged synthetic signals of planet gear in the normal
condition (a) and the tooth root crack (b).
At last, order spectra results of the constructed signal and its corresponding averaged signal of the
planet gear under the normal and abnormal conditions can be obtained by conventional spectral
analysis, and are shown in figure 12. It details the results of two types that signal averaged and non-
averaged. In figure 12(a) and (b), it shows the corresponding order spectrum results of after SA
processing and direct analysis of the signal under normal conditions. It can be seen that there is no
essential difference between the two results, which the meshing order 12×, characteristic order 0.29×,
and their harmonics are difficult to be found since the irrelevant order lines with high amplitude. In
contrast, those features are much clearly under the planet gear tooth root crack condition shown in
14
figure12(c) and (d). And it can be seen that the analysis conclusion of figure12(c) has a better result
than that of figure12(d) since the corresponding signal in figure 12(c) is processed by SA.
Figure 12. The order spectrum analysis result of the synthetic gear vibration. The
result of after SA processing in the normal condition (a), the result of non-
averaged in the normal condition (b), the tooth root crack condition after SA
processing (c), and the tooth root crack condition without SA (d).
In figure 12(c) and (d), order lines around between the fifth and ninth harmonic of the mesh
frequency 12× are richer than others. Then, the corresponding magnified plot is shown in figure 13,
which contains order spectra results of the abnormal and normal condition of the RV reducer test rig
between 50× and 120×. In figure 13, which is divided into two parts that the averaged and non-
averaged. For the averaged part, in figure 13(a), characteristic order lines of the RV reducer that
related to the planet gear tooth root crack, 0.29×, and its harmonics are exposed clearly. On the
contrary, although the observed order lines in the normal condition seemed to have some regularities,
however, it cannot completely match the characteristic orders and with insignificant amplitude. And in
15
the non-averaged part, the similar regularity that shown in figure 13(a) can also be observed in figure
13(b). However, due to the corresponding synthetic signal is not processed by SA, which makes the
observed characteristic orders have an error compared to the theoretical calculation result. It makes the
analysis effect of figure 13(b) worse than that of figure 13(a). In addition, the comparison of the figure
13(a) and (b) verifies the advantages of SA in improving SNR.
Figure 13. Zoomed spectra plot of 50×~120× that contains the abnormal and
normal conditions. The result of after SA processing (a) and the result without
SA (b).
It can be concluded that the plot of spectral analysis result obtained from the proposed method can
be utilized effectively to expose the tooth root crack fault of planet gear in RV reducers. Through
combining the ICOT, the planet gear signal extraction and reconstruction, and the SA, it makes the
vibration signal of planet gear can be effectively extracted. Thus, fault pertained characteristic order
lines can be highlighted. The experimental result verified the effectiveness of the proposed method in
the tooth root crack fault detection of planet gear in RV reducers.
6. Conclusion
This paper details the influence of time-varying transfer path and sun-planet gear meshing regularity
of RV reducers. To detect the tooth root crack fault of planet gear in RV reducers, it presents a method
that combining the improved compute order tracking and angular domain synchronous averaging. The
proposed method has the following advantages. Firstly, vibration data blocks of the sun gear per tooth
of each revolution can be equal-angle resampled by the ICOT method. Then, vibration data blocks of
the planet gear per tooth of each revolution can be extracted from resampled data blocks of the sun
gear. Secondly, vibration data blocks of the planet gear can be constructed into a complete synthetic
gear signal according to the sun-planet gear meshing regularity. Next, irrelevant interference can
effectively be suppressed by the SA technology. The results of comparative experiment validation
demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in the application for the tooth root crack detection
of planet gear in RV reducers.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Plan of China (No.
2018YFB1306103), in part by the Science and Technology Major Project of Yunnan Province (No.
202002AC080001) and in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51675251).
16
The authors are grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and
constructive suggestions.
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Tooth root crack detection of planet gear in RV reducer based

Y H Yan1, Y Guo1, 2 , X Q Liu1

2. Time-varying transfer path and sun-planet gear meshing analysis

Figure 1. Schematic of a typical RV reducer.

2.1 Influence of time-varying transfer path in RV reducers

Figure 2. Signal transfer paths of the sun-planet meshing pair.

2.2 Meshing regularity and fault features of planet gear in RV reducers

Figure 3. The schematic of ICOT.

Figure 4. Recursion on acceleration states.

3.2 Synchronous averaging

Figure 5. Schematic of conventional TSA.

Y (c, d )  X (e, f ) (14)

Figure 6. Schematic of the proposed method.

5. Method experimental verification

5.1 Introduction on the RV reducer test rig

Figure 7. RV reducer test rig.

5.2 Experiment on planet gear with a tooth root crack

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