High Performance Analog MEMS for IoT Based Condition Monitoring, Characterization with a Bearing Failure Emulation Test Bench

High performance vibration measurements are nowadays required to assess the operating performance of modern electrical vehicles, where the increase of motor angular speed leads to the need to measure vibrations at ever higher frequencies. From a perspective of integration in IoT systems, high performance MEMS accelerometers are the solution to perform condition monitoring of roller bearing in modern EV motors. In this work, the authors present the characterization and the possible use of high performances commercial analog MEMS accelerometers for bearing condition monitoring, exploiting a pre-developed test bench able to emulate different kinds of failure of roller bearings. Three uniaxial MEMS accelerometers were mounted on an ad hoc structure to obtain a full triaxial accelerometer and an ad hoc emulation system was designed and used to obtain its response characterization. The experimental results show the astonishing performance of the tested accelerometers, that with a reasonably low cost, show metrological characteristics which are comparable to the one of their expensive piezoelectric counterparts. Moreover, the small size and the low power consumption make the integration of these sensors in an IoT context very easy and promising.