A Fully Sensorized Test Bench for Prognostic Activities on Ball Screws

Experimental analyses are of primary importance in scientific research to validate mathematical models and to confirm theoretical hypotheses on systems' behavior. This paper presents the robust design of a fully sensorized test bench to perform prognostic and health management (PHM) investigations on ball screw mechanisms of electro-mechanical actuators. In order to study the system under a large variety of working conditions, an external force generation system and an innovative variable preload mechanism have been introduced. A complete suite of dedicated sensors are installed to pursue a in-depth validation of high-fidelity mathematical models of the component and to investigate ball screw's performance in degraded conditions under the effects of different artificially seeded defects.