Monitoring gear vibrations through motor current signature analysis and wavelet transform.

The article reports on the proposal of the motor current signature analysis (MCSA) as an efficient and non-intrusive method of detecting fluctuation in gear load in Europe. The FFT analysis revealed that low frequencies of the vibration signatures have sidebands across line frequency of the current while high frequencies of vibration signature are difficult to be detected. The results indicate that MCSA with discrete wavelet transform can be an alternative for conventional vibration monitoring.