Study and design of a torque meter for the control of the granulate production process

Nowadays improving accuracy, efficiency and robustness in measuring the torque, to overcome problems related to the repeatability of production processes, is taking on an increasingly important role in a highly automated, technologized and robotic industrial world. One of the main instruments available to detect and monitor the torque on a rotating system, such as a motor shaft, is the torque meter. This work, born in collaboration with IMA ACTIVE, deals with the torque meter integrated into granulators of the production chains of pharmaceutical companies to monitor the production process phases. The current transducer solution is revised, to define a sizing procedure for each machinery in which the torque meter must be integrated. Once the analytical relations for the instrument dimensioning are obtained and verified, the dimensioning of a specific missing measuring torque meter is realized and validated. The torque meter, as it is a reference instrument for the monitoring of a pharmaceutical process, requires periodic certifications of calibration. For this reason, in the thesis, it is also analysed the standard instrument used for the calibration procedure. New calibration instruments are here proposed and tested, to allow better emulation of the machine behaviour during the calibration procedure, hopefully improving the overall accuracy. Finally, issues related to the torque meter maintenance are taken into consideration. To simplify the maintenance procedure, a possible realization with modular construction is proposed. A decomposable instrument would allow a drastic reduction of the times required for the maintenance of the instrument, obviating the problems related to the one-piece solution.