Vibration monitoring system based on ADXL335 accelerometer and Arduino Mega2560 interface

Abstract

The Prognostics & Health Management (PHM) techniques play a vital role in industrial maintenance. Different strategies of maintenance are classified as predictive, reactive (run-to-failure), corrective, preventive, predetermined, and condition-based pertaining to their need. Condition-based approach as the name suggests examines the fitness of a machine element in terms of its condition as healthy or faulty rather than scheduling periodic check-ups of the machine element. The condition monitoring systems continuously regulate different parameters so as to identify any anomalous moments suggesting the beginning of faults. Vibration monitoring is a popular practice used to supervise the state of equipment/machine components in an attempt to detect the significant variation caused by growing failures or faults. This technique thus requires a data acquisition (DAQ) system equipped with sensors. However, the economics involved in instrumentation is substantial and everyone cannot just afford it. This paper presents a condition monitoring system based on the ADXL335 accelerometer and Arduino Mega2560 interface. The ADXL335 accelerometer is a low-cost sensor and Arduino Mega2560 is open-source hardware enabling users to co-create low-cost prototyping platforms. The system was established and tested on a cam-follower apparatus followed by its comparison with the standard system.