A gearbox is vital for transmitting motion and power in rotating machinery systems, and the failure in a gearbox due to faults in gears will degrade the performance, even leading to significant losses. Therefore, condition monitoring of a gearbox is vital for maintaining system performance. In the present work, condition monitoring of a bevel gearbox using response surface methodology is presented. An experimental test rig is used for experimentation with varying speed and loading conditions to obtain the vibration signals under normal and simulated defective conditions. Three input parameters, such as radial load, operating speed, and pitting defect, are considered to study the parametric effect. Time-domain Kurtosis is used as the response parameter to monitor the effects on vibrations of the gearbox due to load, operating speed, and pitting defect size. Response surface methodology (RSM), a combination of statistical and mathematical techniques, is employed to describe the relationship between the inputs and outputs of the system. The analysis of the results demonstrates the significance of the size of the pitting defect, the interaction effect of the size and load of the fault, and the interaction effect of the size and speed of the defect on system performance. It further establishes that RSM with analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a reliable method for evaluating the vital factors associated with the vibration of the gearbox.

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