Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing (2001) 15(5), 873}885 doi:10.1006/mssp.2001.1413, available online at http://www.idealibrary.

com on

USE OF THE MOVING CEPSTRUM INTEGRAL TO DETECT AND LOCALISE TOOTH SPALLS IN GEARS
M. EL BADAOUI, J. ANTONI, F. GUILLET
AND

J. DANIE E RE

Laboratoire d+Analyse des Signaux et des Processus Industriels (LASPI)~EA-3059, IUT de Roanne, 20, Avenue de Paris, 42 334 Roanne, France. E-mail: badaoui@univ-st-etienne.fr
AND

P. VELEX
Laboratoire de Me & canique des Contacts, UMR CNRS 5514, INSA de Lyon, Ba L t. 113, 20 Avenue Albert Einstein, 69 621 Villeurbanne Cedex, France

The objective of this paper is to propose a new indicator for the vibratory diagnosis of gear systems. This indicator is deduced from the power cepstrum of the accelerometer signal. A model aimed at simulating the contributions of local tooth defects such as spalls to the gear dynamic behaviour is set-up. The pinion and the gear of a pair are modelled as two rigid cylinders with all six degrees of freedom connected by a series of springs which represent gear body and gear tooth compliances on the base plane. It permits us to foresee the shape of the excitation induced by the presence of spalls. From an analytical analysis of the equations of motion, a detection technique based upon the acceleration power cepstrum is proposed. The identi"cation of the spalls is provided by the fact that the power cepstrum of the excitation that it generates is strictly negative, in contrast to that of a normal excitation. A tool of detection and localisation, using this property, has been de"ned. It is "rst tested on acceleration signals simulated by numeric integration of the model, then on real signals.
2001 Academic Press

1. INTRODUCTION

Rotating machine diagnosis is becoming more important because it contributes to safety in critical applications such as aeronautics but, more generally, because it reduces equipment downtime and maintenance costs. There are two main types of diagnostic techniques in use today, i.e. vibration monitoring and debris monitoring techniques, which have both had limited success in detecting gear failures. Focusing on vibration analysis, some methods use synchronously averaged signals in order to reduce random noise and contributions unrelated to the particular gear of interest. The current tendency is to "nd techniques capable of detecting the occurrence of faults at an early stage. The simplest time domain analyses are based on statistical indicators such as kurtosis [1, 2] whose amplitude can be related to the state of the gear. More sophisticated techniques can be employed, including amplitude and phase demodulation by using Hilbert transforms [3], time}frequency transforms based on the Wigner}Ville decomposition [4], wavelet transforms [5}7], etc. Due to the lack of sensitivity of these methods for early detection, alternate methods relying on stress wave propagation (acoustic emission) have been considered [8, 9] but they are strongly dependent on the propagation path and the interfaces between the wave source and the sensors. Among the numerous available signal processing techniques used in vibration monitoring, it has been demonstrated in early papers [10}13] that the power cepstrum of the
0888}3270/01/050873#13 $35.00/0 2001 Academic Press

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acceleration signal is e$cient for detecting localised tooth faults such as spalls. The detection principle is based on the increase of the energy level associated with the rotational period of the defective wheel and it has been shown that the proposed defect identi"er is independent of the sensor position, the signal amplitudes and the signal-to-noise ratio [14}16]. However, results were limited to the de"nition and use of a global defect indicator with no information on the defect position. The present paper presents some complementary theoretical developments and an extension towards defect localisation. The organisation of the paper is as follows. First, a mechanical model of a pinion}gear pair is used to characterise some properties of the dynamic response of a geared system with a tooth defect. Next, it is demonstrated that the additional excitation generated by a tooth fault can be e!ectively extracted from acceleration signals by virtue of the power cepstrum properties. Finally, some applications to simulated and experimental signals illustrate the bene"ts of the methodology.

2. DYNAMIC MODEL AND STRUCTURE OF THE DYNAMIC RESPONSE WITH LOCALISED TOOTH DEFECTS

In order to qualitatively analyse the in#uence of tooth spalls on gear dynamic response, a simpli"ed version of the model of Velex and Maatar [17] is used and extended to account for localised tooth faults. A pinion and a gear of a pair are modelled as two rigid cylinders connected by a set of lumped sti!nesses which accounts for contact, tooth and gear body de#ections (Fig. 1). The elemental sti!nesses are associated with all potential points of contact on the base plane as well as elemental normal deviations e( , t) in order to simulate actual tooth #ank geometries. According to rigid body kinematics, the corresponding lines of contact are translated at constant speed and all relevant parameters are recalculated at each time step of the meshing process. Quasi-analytical indications on the response structure can be obtained if the following simpli"cations are introduced: (a) except for localised tooth defects, the pinion and the gear are geometrically perfect; (b) the mesh sti!ness per unit of contact length of a pair k is supposed to be constant  along the face width and the path of contact; (c) the contributions of bending angles are averaged over one mesh period so that a constant structure vector +< , [i.e. a vector connecting mesh de#ections to the  system degrees of freedom, see equation (4) below] can be used. In these conditions, the equations of motion read as [M]+x ( ,#[C]+x R ,#[K ]+x,#[K(t,+x,)]+x,"+F ,#+F(e ( H(t)),#+G(t,+x,), ?  (1)

and the analytical expressions of the two quantities which largely control the geared system dynamic response to tooth defects are [K(t, +x,)]"k  +G(t,+x,),"k 

 

*R

H( ( , t)) d +< ,+< ,2   H( ( , t)) e( , t) d +< , 

(2)

(3)

*R

where (t) is the nominal contact length at time t and H( ( , t)) is the unit Heaviside function which is zero when contact is lost and equal to one otherwise. Contact de#ections

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Figure 1. Gear model (degrees of freedom are represented on gear only).

( , t) and tooth shape deviations e( , t) are related by ( , t)"+< ,2+x,! e( , t) (4)  with e( , t)"eH(t)!e( , t), eH(t) being the maximum of e( , t) at t which is zero for perfect tooth #anks.

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Figure 2. Defect modelling and characteristic functions.

Each local fault is modelled by normal deviations e( , t) at a given location on the base plane (Fig. 2) which depends on both (along defect widths) and time in order to simulate the defect extents in the pro"le direction. Focusing on the early detection of localised tooth defects, it can be assumed that (i) contact is kept in the defect area (H( ( , t))"1, i.e. small depth of defect compared to mesh de#ection), (ii) no-load transmission error is not modi"ed by defects of small dimensions (defect width is less than tooth face width). Dynamic system (1) becomes linear and the

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excitation functions read as [K(t, +x,)]"[K(t, +x,)] "k (t)+< ,+< ,2 ,"    +G(t, +x,),"+G(t),"k +< ,   (5) (6)

e( , t) d

"R

where the subscript ND refers to no-local-defect conditions (as opposed to geometrical errors) and D(t) is the instantaneous defect width along the contact line. By using the mean value theorem, equation (6) is transformed into +G(t),"k D(t) e ( N , t)+< ,   (7)

where N is the abscissa (measured on a line of contact) of a point inside the instantaneous defect width D(t). After separating space and time variables as e( , t)"P( )F(t) (8)

where F(t) represents the defect morphology in the pro"le direction [a windowing function whose amplitude lies between 0 and 1 within the defect area and is set to zero outside (Fig. 2)], one gets the additional excitation term induced by a tooth fault: +G(t),"k F(t) D(t) P( N ) +< ,.   Setting (t)" (1#
(t)) K (10) (9)

with , a small parameter representing the relative variation of contact length with time, stable solutions can be sought by using a perturbation method (straightforward expansion) i.e. +x,"+x ,# +x ,#2.   (11)

Inserting equation (11) in the linear system associated with equation (1) leads to the main (zero) order di!erential system (higher-order terms are not considered for the sake of clarity): [M]+x ( ,#[C]+x R ,#[K ]+x ,#k +< ,+< ,2+x ,"+F ,#k F(t) D(t)P( N )+< ,.   ?   K       (12) From a physical viewpoint, equation (12) is crucial since it characterises the major contributions of tooth spalls to gear dynamic response. For such a linear di!erential system, the additional response components caused by a localised tooth defect appear as convolutions of the impulse responses of the system with averaged mesh sti!ness and the windowing functions F(t)D(t)P( N ) in equation (9) or their second-order time derivatives when acceleration signals are considered. This fundamental property [valid for main order solutions in equation (11)] justi"es the use of signal processing techniques such as cepstrum analysis which directly separates impulse responses and external excitations. Equation (12) also points to the interest of a method capable of detecting windowing functions in the dynamic response.

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3. CEPSTRUM ANALYSIS

The power cepstrum is a non-linear operator initially used in the detection of echoes [18]. Basically, these authors de"ned the cepstrum of a function as the power spectrum of the logarithm of the power spectrum of that function. Thus, the power cepstrum can be written as sJ "(F\[ln"S( )"]) (13)

where S( ) is the Fourier transform (F) of a signal s(t). This concept was generalised later by Oppenheim [19] while introducing the complex cepstrum de"ned by sL "F\[lnc(S( ))] (14)

where lnc is the complex logarithm, i.e. lnc(S)"ln"S"#i arg(S), arg(S) being the unwrapped version of the phase of S( ). The complex cepstrum represents a reversible operation with application, for example, to deconvolution based on homomorphic "ltering. In the present paper, the real cepstrum is used, and it is de"ned as the inverse Fourier transform of the logarithm of the magnitude of the Fourier transform; i.e. sJ "F\[ln"S( )"]. (15)

The real cepstrum is useful in many applications, and since it does not depend on the phase of S( ), it is much easier to compute than the complex cepstrum. However, since it is based on only the Fourier transform magnitude, it is not invertible. The cepstrum is highly sensitive to recurrent patterns such as those generated by local tooth faults, it transforms convolution into addition and only its zero-order component ("rst sample) depends on the original signal amplitude. 3.1. DETECTION AND LOCATION OF A DEFECT BY MEANS OF THE POWER CEPSTRUM We will show that the cepstrum can also be used to isolate one defect among several and analyse its individual features such as phasing, size and evolution. From the results of Section 2, accelerations are expected to depend on convolutions with second-order time derivatives of =(t)"F(t) D(t), henceforth denoted as = G (t), which can be considered as the vibrational signature of a local tooth spall. Defect identi"cation is therefore equivalent to the detection and analysis of the = G (t). In this context, the interest of the cepstrum is twofold: (i) it directly separates = G (t) and impulse responses by its deconvolution property, and (ii) the power cepstrum of = G (t) is strictly negative in contrast to that of the no-defect response. 3.2. POWER CEPSTRUM OF THE SECOND-ORDER TIME DERIVATIVES OF WINDOWS A signal s plus its echo shifted by samples and attenuated by a factor g can be modelled by s(t)#gs(t! )"s(t)*( #g )"s(t)*e .  ? ?E In the following, we will call the quantity e an echo term. ?E The second-order time derivative of a rectangular window can be expressed as the convolution of two echo terms. An echo term is de"ned by e " #g ?E  ? is a time shift and its real cepstrum is [20] e J (n)" ?E L38H (!1)L\ gL . L? 2"n" (16)

where g)1 is a gain and

(17)

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Figure 3. (a) Echo "10, g"1 and (b) real cepstrum.

Figure 4. Rectangular windowing function and its second-order time derivative.

Figure 3(a) shows an example of an echo simulation with "10 and g"1 and the corresponding cepstrum [Fig. 3(b)] which is a decreasing Dirac comb alternatively positive/negative and periodic of period 10 samples. Figure 4 shows an example of a rectangular window of 10 sample widths and its second-order derivative. The second non-zero sample of the second-order time derivative can be viewed as the inverted echo of the "rst one with a unit delay which, according to the previous notations, is denoted as e . The last two samples appear as the inverted echo of \ the "rst two ones with a delay of 10 units further denoted as e . In these conditions, \ a= G (t) of a duration of N samples and amplitude A is expressed as = G (t)"Ae e \ * ,\ (18)

From de"nition (15) and equation (17), its power cepstrum is 1 1 IG (n)"! = ! #ln(A) . L?  2"n" 2"n" L* L38H L38H (19)

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Figure 5. Power cepstrum of second-order time derivative (N"10).

This can be expressed by a function of the generic integer k as 1 IG (k)"! 1 ! = for kO0 and SD I =(0)"ln(A). (20) 2"k" 2"n" I L* L 3 8H The power cepstrum of = G is essentially formed by two series of equally spaced decreasing negative peaks whose spacing is a function of the signal sampling and N the window duration. Figure 5 represents the = G power cepstrum with N"10 samples. The excitations for gears with no localised defect are periodic functions, i.e. time-varying mesh sti!ness, contributions of tooth shape deviations and mounting errors often gathered under the general term of transmission error. These excitation sources can be modelled as a series of windows convolved with impulses of adequate shapes A numeric window of amplitude A and of width N samples is the di!erence of two step functions shifted by N samples, therefore expressible as (t)"Ah*( ! )"Ah*e (21)  , ,\ where h is the discrete Heaviside step function with Fourier transform: H(v)"1/(1!e\L J). Consequently, the window power cepstrum is written as !F\[ln"1!e\GLJ"]"ln(A)#e J !e J ,\ ,\ \ which gives according to equation (17) J (n)"ln(A)#e J 1 1 ! J (n)"ln(A)# L 2"n" 2"n" L, L3,H L3,H that we can write according to the generic index k: (22)

(23)

1 1 J (k)" ! for kO0 and J (0)"ln(A). (24) 2"k" 2"n" IL, L3,H To identify localised tooth faults such as spalls we use the fact that the cepstrum of the excitation that it induces is strictly negative, in contrast to one of a normal excitation. The accelerometer signal is the convolution of the excitation with the structure impulse response, and owing to the deconvolution property of the cepstrum, one of the excitations is

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Figure 6. Time signal and MCI curves of simulated acceleration. The width defect is equal to 0.1 of the face width.

additively present in the vibratory signal. While supposing that the structural response is stationary, a method for the location of surface failure such as spalling or pitting can be derived: the moving cepstrum integral (MCI). The principle is based upon the evaluation of the power cepstrum integral over a normalised rectangular window function shifted in time along the whole of the acceleration signal. The extent of the moving window is set to be the time between tooth engagement and recess so that a tooth defect can be characterised by a minimum in the cepstrum integral. The integral is calculated without considering the "rst sample in order to eliminate the in#uence of the signal amplitude. To get a localisation at the level of the tooth, the size of this window must not exceed the meshing period. It must also be no smaller than the width of the spall. Between these two limits anything is permitted because the cepstrum integral of a pattern is independent of the size of the window used for calculations, on condition that this size is greater than or equal to the size of the pattern; this property results directly because the cepstrum of a "nite length signal is of in"nite length and because samples that would be situated outside the window of calculation are all aliases in this window. The aliasing, generally considered as a disadvantage, becomes an advantage in this context. Figure 6 represents in (a) a simulation signal of the bearing acceleration with a light spall on the pinion in the shape of a cavity parallelepiped, of width 10 samples and of depth 15 m. It is to be noted that the simulated accelerations have been obtained by numerical integration of the original equations of motion (1) with none of the simpli"cations introduced for the qualitative discussion of the solution in Section 2. The curve (b) represents the corresponding MCI, evaluated on a window of equal width to the meshing period (64 samples). The defect, hardly visible in the signal, is revealed by the MCI in the shape of a #at-bottomed well. This shape suggests that to improve the legibility of the result a median "ltering is capable of reducing the noise e$ciently without eroding the shape of the steps. The curve (c) represents the MCI after a median "ltering, the e$ciency of the "lter is maximum when using a window whose width is just smaller than a duplicate of the well, that is to say of the window used for the MCI (here 127 points).

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Figure 7. (a) Vibratory signal; (b) impulse response and (c) experimental = G.

3.3. EXPERIMENTAL DETERMINATION OF THE SECOND-ORDER TIME DERIVATIVE WINDOW In order to verify experimentally the presence of = G in the vibratory signal one must carry out an operation of deconvolution. In the "rst instance, the impulse response of the mechanical structure between the signal of excitation and the position of the accelerometer sensor has been estimated. The present signal from the accelerometer sensor for a rotating pinion or gear can be written as y(t)"(= G (t)#e(t))*h(t) (25)

where = G is the second-order time derivative of the window, e(t) is the vibratory signal of the meshing gears with no defect, h(t) is the impulse response between the signal of excitation and the sensor. Before the operation of deconvolution, the signal e(t) must be eliminated by a comb "lter in order to obtain the so-called residual signal. The Fourier transform of e(t) is a spectrum of lines where the fundamental frequency is equal to the meshing frequency and h(t) can be estimated from the residual signal by using the method of impulse response identi"cation. The random decrement technique [21] allows us to estimate the impulse response of a system excited by a white noise random signal and has been applied to estimate h(t) [Fig. 7(b)]. Here, the white excitation is assured by the shock due to the spalling defect; thereafter we have estimated the frequency response by applying the Prony method to h(t) and we "nd the Fourier transform of = G by the division of the Fourier transform of the residual signal by the frequency response [Fig. 7(c)]. 3.4. EXAMPLE OF APPLICATION Figure 8(a) represents the synchronous average of a vibratory signal recorded on a CETIM- fatigue test-rig (day C10). The vibratory signal has been averaged synchronously with respect to the pinion rotating period. It can be observed in Fig. 8(b) that an MCI
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CETIM: Centre d'e H tudes techniques des industries me H caniques, 52 av. Felix Louat, 60300 Senlis, France.

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Figure 8. Time signal and MCI curves of experimental acceleration, day 11.

Figure 9. Time signal and MCI curves of experimental acceleration, day 12 (displaced time scale).

minimum emerges at 3103 with no clear evidence of any tooth fault on the original acceleration measurements. This observation has been validated by visual inspection of the pinion and gear which revealed a spalling defect on pinion tooth C 16. Figure 9 represents the measurements taken 1 day later with larger tooth faults. The minimum related to the larger tooth fault clearly dominates the MCI curve.

4. CONCLUSION

From the analytical and numerical results presented in this paper, the following conclusions can be drawn: (a) It can be deduced from a simpli"ed mechanical model of geared transmissions that acceleration signals are approximately characterised by the convolution of the second-order time derivative of a windowing function (= G ) with impulse responses when a gear spall fault is present.

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(b) In such conditions, the power cepstrum is interesting because it separates impulse responses and excitations. It is also demonstrated that the power cepstrum of = G is entirely negative in contrast to no-defect excitations so that a tooth fault can be isolated by a minimum of the power cepstrum integral using a moving window whose extent corresponds to the time between tooth engagement and tooth recess. The so-called moving cepstrum integral is proposed as a new defect identi"er which can be used for both detection and localisation. (c) The concept has been successfully tested on numerical and experimental data, its sensitivity seems satisfactory since light spalls which have no obvious in#uence on time signals have actually been detected. This work was done using data from a simple single-stage gearbox and it cannot be inferred that the problem for a multiple element gear set with several types of defects on di!erent parts will be nearly as manageable. However, the results seem promising and extensions to more complicated geared systems and other types of damage (cracks) are currently being tackled.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of CETIM (Centre des Etudes Techniques des Industries Me H caniques de Senlis) and G.D.R.-P.R.C. ISIS unite H G-720 which provided the experimental results.

REFERENCES 1. R. M. STEWART 1977 Proceedings of the Meeting on the Applications of ime Series Analysis, IS<R, Southampton, Paper 18. Some useful data analysis techniques for gearbox diagnostics. 2. M. J. BRENNAN, M. H. CHEN and A. G. REYNOLDS 1997 Use of vibration measurements to detect local tooth defects in gears. Journal of Sound and <ibration 31, 12}17. 3. P. D. McFADDEN 1986 ransactions of the ASME, Journal of <ibration Acoustics and Stress Relations in Design 108, 165}170. Detecting fatigue cracks in gears by amplitude and phase demodulation of the meshing vibration. 4. F. K. CHOY, V. POLYSHCHUK, J. J. ZAKRAJSEK, R. F. HANDSCHUH and D. P. TOWNSEND 1996 ribology International 29, 77}83. Analysis of the e!ects of surface pitting and wear on the vibration of a gear transmission system. 5. W. J. STASZEWSKI and G. R. TOMLINSON 1994 Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 289}307. Application of the wavelet transform to fault detection in a spur gear. 6. M. ALATTASS 1994 Ph.D. dissertation, INSA de Lyon, 198pp. Maintenance des machines tournantes. Signature des de H fauts d'engrenages droits et he H licomK daux. 7. W. J. WANG and P. D. McFADDEN 1995 Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 9, 497}507. Application of orthogonal wavelets to early gear damage detection. 8. K. KONDO and J. TAKADA 1991 Proceedings of the JSME International Conference on Motion and Power ransmissions, Hiroshima, 763}768. Diagnosis of gears by acoustic emission. 9. A. SINGH, D. HOUSER and S. VIJAYAKAR 1999 ASME Journal of Mechanical Design 121, 587}593. Detecting gear tooth breakage using acoustic emission: a feasibility and sensor placement study. 10. R. B. RANDALL 1980 Cepstrum analysis and gearbox fault diagnosis. Bru ( el and Kjaer echnical Bulletin 2, 1}19. 11. C. CAPDESSUS and M. SIDAHMED 1992 raitement du Signal 8, 365}372. Analyse des vibrations d'un engrenage: cepstre, corre H lation, spectre. 12. V. CAHOUET, M. EL BADAOUI, P. VELEX, F. GUILLET and J. DANIERE 1999 Proceedings of the 4th =orld Congress on Gearing and Power ransmission, Paris. Simulations nume H riques et de H tection d'avaries sur les dentures d'engrenages cylindriques. 13. M. EL BADAOUI, F. GUILLET and J. DANIERE 1998 Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Acoustical and <ibratory Surveillance, Senlis, 291}300. Energy cepstrum contribution for the diagnostic of complex gears.

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14. M. EL BADAOUI, V. CAHOUET, F. GUILLET, J. DANIE E RE and P. VELEX 1999 Proceedings of the 1999 ASME Design Engineering echnical Conferences, as <egas, Nevada, September 12}15. Modelling and detection of localized tooth defects in geared systems. 15. M. EL BADAOUI 1999 The ` se de doctorat, Universite H Jean-Monnet de St.-Etienne, Juillet. Contribution au diagnostic vibratoire des re H ducteurs complexes a ` engrenages par l'analyse cepstrale. 16. M. EL BADAOUI, F. GUILLET and J. DANIERE 1999 Revue raitement du Signal (S) 16, 371}381. Surveillance des Syste ` mes Complexes a ` Engrenages par l'Analyse cepstrale synchrone. 17. P. VELEX and M. MAATAR 1996 Journal of Sound and <ibration 191, 629}660. A mathematical model for analyzing the in#uence of shape deviations and mounting errors on gear dynamic behaviour. 18. B. P. BOGERT, M. J. R. HEALY and J. W. TUKEY 1963 Proceedings of the Symposium on ime Series Analysis, 209}243. Wiley. New York: M. Rosemblah (ed.). The QUEFRENCY analysis of time series of echoes: cepstrum, pseudo-autocovariance, cross-cepstrum and shape cracking. 19. A. V. OPPENHEIM and R. W. SCHAEFER 1989 Discrete-ime Signal Processing. Englewood Cli!s, NJ: Prentice-Hall. E RE, M. MOINE, J. PIGEON, M. COURBON and J. P. SCHON 1992 raitement 20. T. FOURNEL, J. DANIE du Signal 9, 267}271. Utilisation du cepstre d'e H nergie pour la ve H locime H trie par images de particules. 21. P. KOPFF 1991 raitement du Signal 8, 345}354. Renaissance d'une technique de l'analyse modale d'avant les transforme H es rapides: Le de H cre H ment ale H atoire. 22. J. MAHFOUDH, C. BARD, M. ALATTASS and D. PLAY 1995 Proceedings of the 2nd ImechE International Conference on Gearbox Noise, <ibration and Diagnostics, ondon, C492/95, 91}100. Simulation of gearbox dynamic behaviour with gear faults.

APPENDIX A: NOMENCLATURE D(t) e( , t) e*(t) F(t) +F , +F (e ( *(t)), +G(t, +x,), H(x) k  (t) P( ) +< ,  +x, e( , t)"e*(t)!e( , t), ( , t) instantaneous defect width along the contact line instantaneous normal deviation at a point of co-ordinate maximum of e( , t) at t windowing function which represents the normalised defect trace in the tooth pro"le direction (0)"F(t)")1) vector of the nominal torques inertial forces and moments caused by unsteady rotations second member generated by tooth shape deviations and errors unit Heaviside function (H(x)"0 if x)0, H(x)"1 otherwise) mesh sti!ness per unit of contact length instantaneous contact length defect depth along the contact line structure vector [equation (4)] degree-of-freedom vector equivalent normal deviation mesh de#ection