IoT for vibration measurement in engineering research

Abstract

Study of vibrations gives an insight into mechanical behavior of the system or process. This is because vibrations are a direct effect of unbalance force. Higher the magnitude of vibrations, higher is the unbalance force. IoT has made instrumentation cheaper because of the availability of low-cost off-the-shelf sensors and opensource codes to use them. Accelerometers like ADXL335, ADXL345 and Gyro sensors like MPU6050 can be used for measurement of vibrations. IoT development boards like Arduino or Raspberry Pi has facilitated the implementation of this low-cost instrumentation with great ease. In this scenario, the current paper aims at providing an insight into use of these sensors for vibration measurement and their calibration techniques. Two case studies were done, where the authors have implemented these sensors and have been summarized. Also, an experimentation was conducted to study the vibration characteristics of SMA particulate Epoxy composite with increasing moisture content. During this process, pure epoxy as well as the particulate composite is exposed to pure water and sea water separately. Vibration Excitation is done by using DC motors with eccentric loading and frequency response is measured using ADXL345 and the results were discussed in this article. Accelerometers measure the variation of g-force and a test rig is designed and fabricated to measure the variation in g-force for different frequencies of excitation. A detailed discussion on the experimentation procedure and results are presented.