Diagnosis of low-speed helical gears based on Hilbert demodulation and empirical mode decomposition

As the vibration signal of helical gears is nonlinear and nonstationary, it is very difficult to diagnose their faults based on the vibration signal analysis and processing, particularly when the gears rotate at low speed. In this paper, an applicable fault diagnosis approach is proposed based on Hilbert demodulation and EMD (empirical mode decomposition). Firstly, the modulated signals are extracted through Hilbert envelope demodulationand low pass filter. Furthermore, EMD is used to decompose the multi-component demodulated signal into a series of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) whose instantaneous frequencies have a physically meaningful characterization of the original signal. Finally, the fault features of low-speed helical gear are obtained by the spectrum analysis to each IMF. The experiments of tooth broken fault diagnosis show that this method is more effective than traditional Hilbert demodulation analysis.