Condition Monitoring of Lift Gear Boxes by Means of Sound Analysis

The method of Condition Monitoring (CM) or Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) of machinery is straightforward since it aims to identify the changes in the condition of a machine during operation that will indicate some potential failure. This is achieved by utilizing various techniques such as Thermography, Oil Analysis and Ultrasonics. For all maintenance engineers’ diagnosis of gear defects by using sound analysis may be an effective technique in that it provides economic and continuous fault monitoring. In the study, in order to detect the defects in worm gears driven by electric motors, the samples of the sound vibrations emitted from the gears with and without defects are recorded by means of a sound recorder. The comparison of these sound records proved that the acoustic condition monitoring system is able to detect the faulty gears of the elevator drive units.