One of the most important strategies for preventative factory maintenance is anomaly detection without the need for dedicated sensors for each industrial unit. The implementation of sound-data-based anomaly detection is an unduly complicated process since factory-collected sound data are frequently corrupted and affected by ordinary production noises. The use of acoustic methods to detect the irregularities in systems has a long history. Unfortunately, limited reference to the implementation of the acoustic approach could be found in the failure detection of industrial machines. This paper presents a systematic review of acoustic approaches in mechanical failure detection in terms of recent implementations and structural extensions. The 52 articles are selected from IEEEXplore, Science Direct and Springer Link databases following the PRISMA methodology for performing systematic literature reviews. The study identifies the research gaps while considering the potential in responding to the challenges of the mechanical failure detection of industrial machines. The results of this study reveal that the use of acoustic emission is still dominant in the research community. In addition, based on the 52 selected articles, research that discusses failure detection in noisy conditions is still very limited and shows that it will still be a challenge in the future.
Keywords: acoustic recognition; industrial machines; mechanical failure; systematic review.