Real Time Defect Detection of Wheel Bearing by Means of a Wirelessly Connected Microphone

Abstract

In this work, an electronic system aiming to automatically monitor the state of health of wheel bearings, is proposed. The focus is on designing a low cost, smallsize and wirelessly interfaced module. Acoustic emissions are exploited to detect defects by means of a low cost micro electro-mechanical system (MEMS) microphone. Amicrocontroller was used to evaluate the frequency spectrum and to interface the system through a wireless data link. The designed module successfully achieved the proposed goals. Finally, a novel measurement process is presented to evaluate the system performance under realistic conditions.