Vibration Monitoring for Local Faults Detection in Synchronous Belts

The possibility of diagnosing the presence of a fault in a synchronous belt transmission during its work, and then without dismantling it, by means the monitoring of the vibrations of the pulley support, was investigated in this work. After a few simulations with a multi-body numerical model have done, several experimental tests have been carried out in a proper apparatus composed of test bench, motion sensors, system of signal acquisition with software for data processing. The comparison between a transmission with a healthy and a faulty belt has been done. The damage has been simulated removing a tooth from the belt. The results show that the a localized defect on the belt modifies the frequency spectrum of the acceleration signals measured on the pulley support. From the experimental tests performed, the following results were obtained: the direction of vibration measure must be chosen so as to be parallel to the direction of the taut side of the belt; the presence of a defect can be seen in the frequency spectrum by the change of the peaks amplitude at the run frequency and its harmonics; the best condition to highlight the different behaviour is when the transmission is under load.