Failure analysis in predictive maintenance: Belt drive diagnostics with expert systems and Taguchi method for unconventional vibration features.

Predictive maintenance to avoid fatigue and failure enhances the reliability of mechanics, herewith, this paper explores vibrational time-domain data in advancing fault diagnosis of predictive maintenance. This study leveraged a belt-drive system with the properties: operating rotational speeds of 500-2000 RPM, belt pretensions at 70 and 150 N, and three operational cases of healthy, faulty and unbalanced, which leads to 12 studied cases. In this analysis, two one-axis piezoelectric accelerometers were utilized to capture vibration signals near the driver and pulley.