Analysis and Evaluation of Vibration Sensors for Predictive Maintenance of Large Gears with an Appropriate Test Bench

In predictive maintenance of plants, signal analyses are conducted to monitor the conditions of critical components. For complex facilities, suitable condition monitoring systems are individually developed and designed to prevent unexpected plant shutdowns. For the development of a special condition monitoring system for a heavy-load multistage gearbox application, the creation of a realistic demonstrator is suitable. This allows for investigations especially on the rolling bearings installed in the planetary gear and can be used to test the suitability of different sensors. The measurements are conducted under consideration of different parameters and are evaluated by using different analysis methods. Thus, besides the demonstrator, a result of the present paper is an evaluation of various sensors from which recommendations can be derived for the establishment of a condition monitoring system in the examined case. The presented work is addressed to researchers and engineers in the field of condition monitoring of rotating machinery, especially planetary gears and roller bearings.