Vibration-Based Monitoring of Automotive Light Assemblies for Failure Detection

As the automotive industry becomes increasingly competitive, parts manufacturers are under extreme pressure to improve the quality of their parts, while at the same time reducing costs. The method currently used to detect failures in automotive light assemblies after vibration endurance testing involves manual inspection only after the test is completed. An adaptable, reliable and low cost real time monitoring and diagnostic system that would interrupt the testing operation at the first onset of a failure is desired. This paper describes an accelerometer based and a microphone based monitoring system for automotive light assembly failure detection during endurance testing. Preliminary results from these two systems show a significant difference between healthy and faulty fog light assemblies can be detected. This suggests that there is potential to develop these and potentially other measures for use in an adaptable, reliable and low cost real time monitoring and diagnostic system that would interrupt the testing operation at the first onset of a failure.