Pattern recognition approach for acoustic emission burst detection in a gearbox under different operating conditions

Diverse machines in the mining, energy, and other industrial sectors are subject to variable operating conditions (OCs) such as rotational speed and load. Therefore, the condition monitoring techniques must be adapted to face this scenario. Within these techniques, the acoustic emission (AE) technology has been successfully used as a technique for condition monitoring of components such as gears and bearings. An AE analysis involves the detection of transients within the signals, which are called AE bursts. Traditional methods for AE burst detection are based on the definition of threshold values. When the machine under study works under variable rotational speed and load, threshold-based methods could produce inadequate results due to the influence of these OCs on the AE. This paper presents a novel burst detection method based on pattern recognition using an artificial neural network (ANN) for classification. The results of the method were compared to an adaptive threshold method. Experimental data were measured in a planetary gearbox test rig under different OCs. The results showed that both methods perform similarly when signals measured under constant OCs are considered. However, when signals are measured under different OCs, the ANN method performs better. Thus, the comparative analysis showed the good potential of the approach to improve an AE analysis of variable speed and/or load machines.