In order to extract the characteristic quantity which contained failure information from the gear vibration signals, a recurrence plot analysis method based on EMD was proposed. The vibration signal was decomposed into a finite number of IMF using EMD method. Recurrence plot was established by the IMF which contained failure information. Characteristic quantities were extracted from the recurrence plot. The patterns were identified by gaussian mixture model. The results show that the method has a higher recognition rate, it's effective to the gear failures classification and diagnosis.