Design and experience of a test-bed for gearboxes

This paper presents an analysis of feasibility to develop a robust, practical and versatile test-bed for rotordynamic tests with low-cost and user-oriented features. The experience of a particular case of a test-bed design is present for two degrees of freedom (2-DOFs) planetary gearboxes at Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics (LARM). Different designing steps are discussed, including the structural design, instrumentation, data acquisition system, actuators control, online signal processing and maintenance. The outcomes of this experience are presented as a synthesis of a variety of requirements which need to be considered during the design of experiments for rotordynamics tests for a wide range of machinery and suitable tests repeatability and accuracy of the data acquisition system. An example is reported to show the implementation of the proposed procedure.