Gearbox fault diagnosis using data fusion based on self-organizing map neural network

This article aims to provide an efficient fault diagnosis method for gearbox. A self-organizing map–based fault model is developed to provide effective diagnosis of the faults of gearboxes using the gear signals extracted from gearboxes operating with zero and three different types of faults. The gear signals are collected by vibration and acoustic sensors, and pre-denoised using wavelet denoising and wavelet packet decomposition. The characteristic values are subsequently obtained using fast Fourier transform and infinite impulse response filtering. The results showed of the self-organizing map neural network diagnosis model can effectively diagnose gear fault information with a 95% diagnostic accuracy using four input characteristic values: (1) Y-axis vibration displacement amplitude, (2) Y-axis vibration acceleration amplitude, (3) acoustic emission energy amplitude, and (4) acoustic emission signal peak value. The proposed approach provides a novel method to more accurate diagnosis of gear fault pattern and improvement of working efficiency of mechanical instruments.