Date of Award

3-2015

Degree Name

MS in Mechanical Engineering

Department/Program

Mechanical Engineering

Advisor

Xi Wu

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the simulation of the gyroscopic effect using the software MSC Adams. A simple shaft-disk system was created and parameter of the sys-tem were changed in order to study the influence of the gyroscopic effect. It was shown that an increasing bearing stiffness reduces the precession motion. Fur-thermore, it was shown that the gyroscopic effect vanishes if the disk of system is placed symmetrically on the shaft, which reduces the system to a Jeffcott-Ro-tor. The second objective of this study was to analyze different defects in a simple fixed axis gear set. In particular, a cracked shaft, a cracked pinion and a chipped pinion as well as a healthy gear system were created and tested in Adams. The contact force between the two gears was monitored and the 2D and 3D frequency spectrum, as well as the Wavelet Transform, were plotted in order to compare the individual defects. It was shown that the Wavelet Transform is a powerful tool, capable of identifying a cracked gear with a non-constant speed. The last part of this study included fault detection with statistical methods as well as with the Sideband Energy Ratio (SER). The time domain signal of the individual faults were used to compare the mean, the standard deviation and the root mean square. Furthermore, the noise profile in the frequency spectrum was tracked with statistical methods using the mean and the standard deviation. It was demonstrated that it is possible to identify a cracked gear, as well as a chipped gear, with statistical methods. However, a cracked shaft could not be identified. The results also show that SER was only capable to identify major defects in a gear system such as a chipped tooth.

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