Acoustic Sensors Used for Gearbox Vibration Monitoring and Diagnostics

The impending failure of a machine can be predicted by condition-monitoring to detect precursors to failure. When a failure precursor is detected, actions to prevent or delay that failure can be taken. Acoustic Emission Sensors (AES) have been successfully used in condition-monitoring applications. They are attractive because they can detect events that are significantly above the spectral range of accelerometers and provide a unique capability for monitoring transient events such as crack propagation. During Phase I, we plan to define requirements for an AES-based gearbox vibration monitoring system and demonstrate automatic detection and classification of turbojet engine faults using a set of turbojet engine data gathered by AESS. This fault detection and classification system will be developed on ORINCON's RIPPENT application, which provides a means of rapidly processing data through a variety of alternative processing chains. Using RIPPEN tm we will develop and demonstrate a rapid prototype of the processing architecture for a real-time gearbox monitoring system. A system design that includes both AES and accelerometer sensors, signal processors, a processing architecture, and displays for real-time monitoring of gearbox components will be produced for use in the Phase II acoustic/accelerometer sensor performance comparison.