Development, realization and validation of a device for real-time monitoring of fatigue behavior

The health monitoring of mechanical components and systems is a technique known and applied for decades in almost all fields of engineering since it allows a drastic reduction ofthe risks associated with any unexpected failure of components and at the same time allows reducing the plant maintenance and management costs. Several monitoring techniques exists and all of them are based on the acquisition and processing on-field measurements aimed to evaluate possible changes in the behavior of the component. Among these, in recent years a method able to monitor in real-time the fatigue damage or the potential damage of a structure with few information has been developed. In this paper, this method, implemented and tested only numerically, has been implemented in an acquisition board, expressly developed, and its ability to operate in real-time by monitoring the failure of a real component subjected to random vibrations has been tested.