Publication: Fault detection and failure analysis of grease-lubricated spur gear
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Date
2023-07-07
Authors
Adzlan bin Abu Hasan
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Abstract
Lubricants that are based on vegetable oil are preferred as compared to other mineral based lubricants due to their environmental advantages in terms of sustainability and biodegradability. The performance of grease may affect the friction and wear in spur gears used in various applications such as transmission, industrial machinery, and power generation. Thus, this study focuses on investigating the performance of palm-oil based grease and other commercial grease by failure analysis of the gears based on surface characterization, mass loss and vibration analysis. Three types of grease were studied namely nanoparticles palm oil with Molybdenum Disulphide (𝑀𝑜𝑆2) additive, Toyo EAJ 7000 and SKF LGMT 2/0.4 mineral grease. National Instruments (NI) Labview and Data Acquisition were used for vibration monitoring analysis and three accelerometers connected to the pillow block and the base of the gear test rig. A Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Confocal Laser Microscope were used to analyse the wear of the gear surface, surface roughness, gear profile and wear depth. The nanoparticles palm oil-based grease (NPG) showed the best performance and comparable with SKF LGMT grease due to its low vibration level, low percentage of mass loss, low surface roughness and wear depth. The vibration level observed were 0.6635 m/𝑠2 and 0.8084 m/𝑠2 for horizontal and vertical mounting respectively. The vibration level obtained were the lowest among other greases.