Application of acoustic emission to seeded gear fault detection

Acoustic emission (AE) is gaining ground as a non-destructive technique for health diagnosis on rotating machinery. There are vast opportunities for development of the AE technique on various forms of rotating machinery, including gearboxes. This paper reviews some recent developments in application of AE to gear defect diagnosis. Furthermore, an experimental investigation that examines the effectiveness of AE for gear defect identification is presented. It is concluded that application of the AE technique to seeded gear defect detection is fraught with difficulties. In addition, the viability of the AE technique for gear defect detection from non-rotating components of a machine is called into question.