Carlos Santiago López-Cajún

For fault diagnosis and predictive maintenance of rotating machinery, the phase errors generated by the integration processing of a vibration signal are an essential investigation subject. Phase errors affect the solution of mechanical systems with multiple vibration sources and also the information transmitted through the vibration that is used for fault diagnosis. This work proposes the use of phase plane, recurrence plot (RP), and cross recurrence plot (CRP) to evaluate phase shift error effects on the solution of multiple asynchronous and simple periodic functions, and on the smoothing of a Gaussian peak with white noise. Noisy peaks were smoothed twice with the triangular method and with a different number of points. The analysis of the asynchronous periodic functions and the smoothing indicated that a small phase shift changes the phase plane and the RP pattern. These changes can affect not only the accuracy of machinery fault diagnosis but also prediction for the application of timely maintenance actions.

Complex systems are a broad concept that comprises many disciplines, including engineering systems. Regardless of their particular behavior, complex systems share similar behaviors, such as synchronization. This paper presents different techniques for determining the source of coupling when a set of oscillators synchronize. It is possible to identify the location and time variations of the coupling by applying a combination of analytical techniques, namely, the source of synchronization. For this purpose, the analysis of experimental data from a complex mechanical system is presented. The experiment consisted in placing a 24-bladed rotor under an airflow. The vibratory motion of the blades was recorded with accelerometers, and the resulting information was analyzed with four techniques: correlation coefficients, Kuramoto parameter, cross-correlation functions, and the recurrence plot. The measurements clearly show the existence of frequencies due to the foreground components and the internal interaction between them due to the background components (coupling).

Energy harvesting from vibrating systems represents an alternative for reducing pollution, fossil fuel consumption and other environmental externalities associated to road transportation. While a variety of technological schemes has been proposed for harvesting vibrational energy from vehicles, the resultant devices have not been competitive with other energy recovering systems such as regenerative braking (EGB). In this paper, a simulator for the operation of an energy harvester accessory is presented, in which the harvester is installed around the damper of an existing suspension system as the vehicle travels on a rough pavement. The relative motion of the chassis and suspension is used to generate the electrical energy through two magnets and a coil. The transition matrix approach is considered to solve the equations of motion of different vehicles, while the visualization software is based upon MATLAB. Results suggest that power outputs can reach up to 100 W when a two-axle vehicle travels on a poor condition road. The potential implementation of the system is further discussed.

This research ponders the origin of errors due to manufacturing and assembling processes that affect pose accuracy of any given robot. The estimation of these errors allows designers to define the influence of individual elements in the overall compliance. Two methods for assessing pose accuracy in parallel robots are presented in this paper: the simplified and the comprehensive methods. The former, based on the assumption that each actuator has a constant error, produces a preliminary rough estimation of pose accuracy; the latter, based on error propagation, requires the measurement of the displacement error of each actuator. Both methods were applied to estimate the accuracy of a high-precision Stewart platform and to verify it experimentally. These methods were validated through an actual platform, and results showed good agreement between them.

A complex system is composed of many interacting components, but the behavior of the system as a whole can be quite different from that of the individual components. An automobile is an example of a common mechanical system composed of a large number of individual components that are mechanically connected in some way and hence transmit vibrations to each other. This paper proposes a variety of inter-related analytical tools for the study of experimental data from such systems. In this work, experimental results of accelerometer data acquired at two locations in the automobile for two different kinds of tests are analyzed. One test is the response to impact on a stationary vehicle, and the other is the road-response to the vehicle being driven on a flat road at different speeds. Signals were processed via Fourier and wavelet transforms, cross-correlation coefficients were computed, and Hilbert transforms and Kuramoto order parameters were determined. A new parameter representing synchronization deficit is introduced. There is indeed some degree of synchronization that can be quantified between the accelerations measured at these two locations in the vehicle.