Evaluation of 77 GHz Radar for Industrial Fan Quality Inspection

Quality inspection is crucial in production lines. During the fabrication process, defects and imperfections can be present and the affected manufactured parts must be discarded. Such process must be fast and reliable to not slow down the production line and assure that out of tolerance parts are always identified. Different methodologies are investigated and applied to perform the task, but for companies, it is always of interest to discover novel methods to improve the quality inspection process. In this work, the manufactured under test is an industrial fan, and the test methodology proposed leverages a radar sensor. Two main quantities are extracted: the fan's rotation speed and its vibration displacement. To validate the radar method, reference sensors are used. At the end, a comparison in measuring rotation speed and vibration displacement with the radar and the reference sensors is provided.