Development of a unique experimental system investigating vibroacoustic characteristic of geared transmission systems

Gearboxes are widely being used in industry, especially in automotive transmission systems. In the current technology level, different component-based quality control methods are utilized for the quality control of mechanical powertrain systems. However, test systems especially designed for assembled products, are based on subjective evaluations and scalar measurements of total sound pressure. These systems, especially operating in industrial conditions where background noise is effective, cannot meet the technical requirements. In this paper, a unique experimental platform, capable of testing the mechanical power transmission systems under real operating conditions (torque, angular speed, etc.) is introduced, and the preliminary experimental results are given. In the experiment several data are collected on a single stage reductor and errors were classified. In future studies, the experiment will be used as a quality control system on which different types of mechanical faults can be determined through vibro-acoustic measurements.