Condition Monitoring und Prognostics and Health Management

Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on monitoring and predicting the condition of technical systems in order to maximize their service life and reliability. A central aspect of PHM is the determination of the Remaining Useful Life (RUL), i.e. the remaining useful life of a component until it fails. This also enables timely maintenance measures to be initiated. The basis for PHM is condition monitoring. Based on this, the sensor data is pre-processed, the condition is estimated using physical or data-based models and future damage states are predicted.

In the field of drive technology [link to drive technology page], extensive investigations are carried out into the detection and localization of tooth flank damage during operation. High-frequency vibration sensors are mainly used to record the measurement data. Data evaluation is carried out both physically based and using AI-based anomaly detection [link to AI page]. Early detection and localization of the damage is necessary in order to be able to extend the RUL of a gearbox with an adaptive operating strategy. An adapted torque modulation is used to specifically relieve the damaged area of a gear and distribute the load to the remaining, healthy teeth. These compensate for the load reduction, the damage is homogenized and the service life is extended.