Condition Monitoring: How to monitor powertrains with smart drive shafts

Condition Monitoring with smart drive shafts

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Nowadays, drive shafts and clutches equipped with conventional condition monitoring sensors need an expert opinion to analyse the results. New developments in the field will improve and simplify condition monitoring of powertrains.

Consider your own vehicle in your garage – all components and critical units are equipped with sensors that signal any irregularities to the car computer. Why not transfer this kind of technology to industry and machine drives? Walterscheid Powertrain Group, and especially our affiliated service experts of Off-Highway Powertrain Services, have been working on a smart drive shafts. This concept is aimed at providing technical data directly from the running drive shaft. We want to explain to you how this concept works and where it can be applied.

What exactly is a drive shaft?

A drive shaft transfers torque between gears, transfer box and drive axles in a machine or system. A drive shafts allows the connection of two non-aligned axes of rotation. During compression, gears and axles move relatively to one another, so the drive shaft must be able to compensate this relative motion.

How does a smart drive shaft work?

Drive shafts are among the most critical components of a machine drive and you should keep an eye on them all the time. Digitalization offers new methods of inspection to assess the actual state of critical components in machine drives. Big Data, Industry 4.0 and the subsequent digitalization in production processes make it easy for users to collect data on the condition of their machines and use them for maintenance measures. Condition based maintenance or predictive maintenance are the keywords you often hear in this context. The problem until now: this technology could not be used for the whole powertrain so far.

The maintenance solutions by Off-Highway Powertrain Services integrates sensors directly into the critical components of the drive shaft.

Our new drive shafts aims to change that. The intelligent maintenance solution integrates sensors directly into the critical components of the drive shaft. These sensors transmit live data on technical system parameters during operation – e.g., torque, angle, even data on wear. Users can then take readings from the drive shaft’s digital twin. This digital solution makes all relevant product and service information available to you on a digital device at all times. In case of damage, you can use the affixed QR code to easily identify and reorder the drive shaft.

To conclude, these are the benefits of this new technologies:

increased availability of your machines using condition-based maintenance
decreased maintenance and repair efforts by optimizing maintenance and lubrication plans
high transparency about actual life span
high performance of drive train components

That’s us

We, the experts from Off-Highway Powertrain, focus on drive train components in machines and systems – commissioning, monitoring, maintaining, repairing, optimizing and predictively maintaining your powertrain throughout its complete life-cycle. Off-Highway Powertrain Services is a brand of Walterscheid Powertrain Group.

The innovative Smart & Connected technology devised by Off-Highway Powertrain Services supplies you with all relevant data that is needed to optimize and maintain your powertrain’s performance.

Maintenance: How to put predictive maintenance into practice

Application range of this technology is beyond simple maintenance. By collecting live data, you learn a lot about the actual duty cycle – this helps to install the drive shaft in ideal proportion to the actual load. Torque peaks or temperature provide insight into the load that the drive shaft is subject to during operation. This information not only helps detecting wear, but also to dimension your components correctly according to your needs.

Walterscheid Powertrain Group calls this technology “Smart and Connected Powertrain Solutions“. Users will reap benefits by using the provided information about their powertrain. This new innovative drive shaft will digitalize maintenance and materialize the vision of Predictive Maintenance and Industry 4.0.

Find out more about our smart drive shaft!

You would like to learn more or give this new system a try? Contact our experts: smart.connect@walterscheid.com Or contact us via our website: https://www.walterscheid-group.com/contact

Condition Monitoring with smart drive shafts