Wireless vibration monitoring enables predictive maintenance of machinery
Posted on Oct 28, 2011
Holst Centre, imec and Flanders Mechatronics Technology Centre (FMTC) have reported the development of an energy-autonomous, wireless vibration sensor node for industrial machinery. The install-and-forget node could enable manufacturing companies to schedule condition-based maintenance for their equipment, saving time and money.
Condition-based maintenance allows machine owners to minimize spare parts costs, system downtime and service man-hours by only performing maintenance when it is needed. A common way to determine when maintenance is needed is by monitoring the vibration on the machine. However, today’s wired vibration sensors can only be attached to the static parts of a machine, while it is the moving parts that typically suffer the most wear.
To improve the accuracy of condition monitoring, Holst Centre, imec and FMTC have developed a wireless vibration sensor node that can be attached to both static and moving parts. The node is powered through energy harvesting enabling completely autonomous operation and avoiding maintenance costs and the need to replace batteries.
It features an innovative, annular thermal electric generator (TEG), developed at Holst Centre as part of the Micropower program. This converts thermal energy from a rotating shaft into electricity. The TEG is combined with a low-power wireless sensor node architecture that features a tunable sample rate, allowing the node to be deployed in various operating conditions.
The TEG and sensor node have been successfully tested in an industrial application involving a shaft rotating at up to 1800 rpm. In these tests, the TEG delivered a maximum power of 22 mW, more than enough to power the sensor node at even the highest sampling rates required. In addition, the TEG / sensor node combination was able to accurately characterize the 3-dimensional accelerations on the rotating shaft. These results will be presented at IEEE Sensors 2011 October (28-31) and PowerMEMS 2011 in November (15-18).
Developing the autonomous wireless condition monitoring sensor node is part of a wider collaboration between Holst Centre and FMTC that also covers measuring the whole body vibrations experienced by operators of heavy-duty machines and vehicles.. This cooperation is a feature of Holst Centre’s OpenSME initiative to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) benefit from the open innovation carried out at Holst Centre.
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