Modeling Impulsive Ball Mill Forces Effects on the Dynamic Behavior of a Single-Stage Gearbox

Abstract

Gearboxes are frequently used in the mining industry, especially for power transmission between the electric drive and the ball mill; besides the extreme complexity of a ball mill gear transmission system, the fault diagnosis by vibration analysis can be easily distorted by the presence of impulsive noises due to the ball pulses on the mill shell. Although several works in the literature are related to the influence of an impulsive noise on the accuracy of the diagnosis, no dynamic model exists yet in the literature that can explain the influence of these forces on the dynamic behavior of gearboxes. This paper presents a new approach to determine the influence of the grinding forces in crack defects diagnosis. This approach is based on a hybrid numerical model of a 24-degree-of-freedom gearbox, simulating one gear train and two drive shafts. The impact forces of the mill drum are modelled by a discrete element method (DEM). The ball-filling rate (Fr), the mill speed (Nr), and the ball size (Db) are considered to study this phenomenon. The simulations results show by a time series representation, fast Fourier transform, and short-time Fourier transform (STFT), that the acceleration is significantly affected by the presence of the grinding forces, developing an impulsive noise due to the impact of the balls governed by the studied parameters.