Today, we are presenting an exciting customer project realized together with our partner, Elbe Group. A well-known manufacturer from the motorcycle industry tasked us with equipping cardan shafts with torque sensors for test series and development trials to determine the damping properties in motorcycle cardan shafts.
Typical properties and challenges of the cardan shaft
The cardan shaft is a durable and extremely low-maintenance drive concept in which power is transmitted to the rear wheel via the cardan shaft. The particular challenge here is a damping element, which naturally has a significant influence on dynamic torques. An elastic intermediate layer is applied between the larger outer tube and the smaller inner tube via a vulcanization process. This is followed by the assembly of the universal joint.
Live measurement data and evaluation thanks to an integrated sensor
To provide the user with as much valuable information as possible and to investigate the cardan shaft’s limitations, strain gauges were applied on both sides of the rubber element and connected to our miniaturized Bluetooth measurement amplifier coreLIME, which is placed inside the tube.
The power supply is ensured by a rechargeable battery and exceeds the requirements. Well over 2,000 operating hours can be covered with a single charge. The generated measurement data can be logged on the measurement amplifier, viewed and recorded live in the mobile application, and fed into a variety of systems via the appropriate core sensing gateway, e.g., 0–5 V, 0–10 V, 4–20 mA, USB-C, CAN bus, RS-232, or directly via mobile data into the cloud.
Key Facts:
- Sampling rate: 500 Hz
- Integrated speed measurement
- 3-axis acceleration up to 30 g
- Integrated temperature measurement
- Energy-efficient battery operation
- Wireless Bluetooth data transmission
- Factory calibration,
- Measurement deviation < 2%
