Vibration-Based Diagnostics for Rotary MEMS

This paper demonstrates the use of low-cost off-the-shelf (OTS) microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology to perform vibration-based in situ monitoring, diagnostics, and characterization of a MEMS microball bearing supported radial air turbine platform. A multimodal software suite for platform automation and sensor monitoring is demonstrated using a three-level heuristic software suite and sensor network. The vibration diagnostic methods used in the platform have applications in rotary microsystems for the early detection of failure, fault diagnosis, and integrated diagnostic systems for feedback-based optimization to increase device performance, reliability, and operational lifetimes. The studied rotary microdevice used a dual OTS accelerometer configuration for dual range parallel redundant vibration analysis. The sensor suite has been used to monitor and detect multiple operational parameters measured optimally in time or frequency domains such as rotor instability, imbalance, wobble, and system resonance. This paper will lay the framework for active diagnostics in future MEMS devices through integrated systems.