Intelligent Drive in Industry 4.0 – Protection of Toothed Belt Transmission on the Basis of Its Digital Twin

In modern industry, the autonomy in responding to threats is a highly valued feature of machines. The ability to quickly collect and process data on the condition of equipment and events in its environment is the basis for many security or alarm solutions. However, some components are excluded from ongoing monitoring due to difficulties in placing and operating sensors in their area. This state of affairs causes diagnostic methods to be developed in the direction of inferring about given damage with limited access to signals clearly related to specific symptoms. One of the elements of Industry 4.0 – a digital twin – may be helpful in this area. The advantages of such a solution can be observed on the example of virtual representation of the toothed belt drive. The publication describes a proposal to use a dynamic model of a device for the induction of information about the behaviour of a flexible transmitting element only on the basis of the recording of the input and output motions in the mechanism under consideration. The transmission is treated as a “black box”, which can be accessed through a computer simulation. This allows one to determine the condition of the toothed belt, which strength translates into the reliability of the machine. The knowledge gained in this way plays a key role in the system of automatic protection against the breaking of the belt. The principles of the intelligent drive and the result of its experimental verification are presented in the publication.