Feasibility of a phased acoustic array for monitoring acoustic signatures from meshing gear teeth

This paper investigates the feasibility of sensing damage emanating from rotating drivetrain elements such as bearings, gear teeth, and drive shafts via airborne paths. A planar phased acoustic array is evaluated as a potential fault detection scheme for detecting spatially filtered acoustic signatures radiating from gearbox components. Specifically, the use of beam focusing and steering to monitor individual tooth mesh dynamics is analyzed taking into consideration the constraints of the array/gearbox geometry and the spectral content of typical gear noise. Experimental results for a linear array are presented to illustrate the concepts of adaptive beam steering and spatial acoustic filtering. This feasibility study indicates that the planar array can be used to track the acoustic signatures at higher harmonics of the gear mesh frequency.