Development of a driveshaft torque transducer for low-cost structural health monitoring of off-highway vehicles

Abstract

Mechatronic agricultural machines and equipment are continuously increasing their complexity and cost. In order to ensure their efficiency and reliability and preserve their value, it is important to actively monitor the working loads and register damaging and wear occurring on critical components. This approach needs the introduction of sensors on the machine, which allow continuous monitoring and evaluate the residual life of components. The work presents the development and testing of an innovative low-cost systems for monitoring and diagnostic of off-highway vehicles. The sensor measures the torque of a mechanical power transmissions, and it was designed especially for agricultural machinery. The torque transducer monitors the mechanical power flowing from the tractor into the gearbox and the agricultural implement and is fully integrated with the power take-off driveshaft, thus being generally applicable. The design and development of the transducer was performed following a quality function deployment approach. The system is less expensive considering the typical torque measuring system commercially available and, thanks to its wireless module and integrated power supply, it is reliable and generally applicable to many power take-off to implement combinations.

An Efficiency Based Approach for the Energy Management in HEVs

“…In particular, in the considered scythe operation, the speed reference was equal to 1200 rpm and the average load torque was 100 Nm. During this simulation, we assumed that the PTO torque was provided by a sensor, like the one shown in [46]. However, if such a sensor is not available, load torque estimators can be employed [47].…”

A Review on Sensor‐Integrating Machine Elements

“…The design of the connections is standardized according to for example, DIN 7190-1, [130] DIN 6892, [131] DIN 5480-1, [132] ISO 4156, [133] but research on sensor-integrated SHC is still limited to a few projects. Worth mentioning are the patents by Gandrud, [134] Bader, [135] Groche & Traub [136] as well as the works of Vogel et al, [137] Bonaiti et al, [116] Khan et al, [138] Golinelli et al, [139] Min et al, [140] Persson & Persson, [141] Seltmann et al [142] Groche as well as Bader describe a feather key (FK) to measure torques. In the first patent, Groche & Traub [136] a FK is described, which consists of two vertical crossbars connected with a transverse crossbar.…”

“…For splined shafts, Khan et al [138] have developed a sensor for measuring the torsion about an axis, which is called a square-cuttorque-sensor (SCTS). The SCTS is a kind of hub with a significant decrease in stiffness (refer to Section 1.3), a similar sensor type was used by Min et al [140] Golinelli et al [139] worked out a torque sensor for the PTO of an agriculture gearbox. It should have high linearity, symmetry, scalability, and easy mounting of the strain gauges.…”

Dynamic load distribution property of transmission system during rice harvesting process

“…All the torque and speed signals were collected by the DH-5902 wired or DH-5905 wireless torque and speed signals acquisition system. 15,16 The torque and speed signals were sent to a laptop by a wireless card.…”