A Vibroacoustic Model for Wear Evaluation of Polymer Gears

In the presented study, an experimental procedure was developed to evaluate the influence of tooth flank wear on the noise behaviour of the POM/steel gear pair. Changes in sound pressure level were monitored as a function of the POM pinion's wear rate by measuring noise and vibration under controlled test conditions. The vibroacoustic analysis was evaluated using time-frequency analysis (TFA) and adapted transform analysis (ATA). Furthermore, the normalised spectral entropy (NSE), the normalised window spectral entropy (NWSE) and the normalised adaptive spectral entropy (NASE) were also considered when evaluating the noise behaviour of the analysed gear pair. The experimental results showed that the sound pressure level increases with increasing gear flank wear. Frequency and time–frequency analysis of the sound signals showed that the dominant frequency components correspond to the gear meshing frequency and its higher harmonics, which increase with increasing wear. Furthermore, the entropy-based indicators can also effectively characterise the dynamic behaviour of the gear system.,The results of this study contribute to a better understanding of the influence of wear on the vibroacoustic response of polymer gears and provide a basis for developing diagnostic methods to detect wear conditions across different engineering applications. Future research should expand the experimental analysis to different combinations of polymer gear materials and to a wider range of operating conditions, including higher loads and different temperature regimes.