Session: 14-02: Applications and Reliability of Sensors

Paper Number: 144778

144778 - Ultrasonic Monitoring Roller Load Variation Induced by Roller Wear 

Cylindrical roller bearings are widely used in various rotating machinery. Once the bearing fails, the shutdown of the equipment can have disastrous consequences. Therefore, the assessment of bearing useful life can be used for early warning of bearing failure. The bearing life is directly related to the roller load, and the useful life can be predicted according to the theoretical life model. However, bearings are usually in a harsh operation environment, wear will always occur. Once the wear occurs, it will increase the bearing clearance, affect the load distribution, and thus change the roller load. Therefore, it is very important to accurately measure the load variation carried by rollers caused by the change of bearing clearance.

At present, the main method of measuring the bearing load is using strain gauge. For example, Nagatomo installed an optical fiber strain sensor on the roller of cylindrical roller bearing to measure the dynamic load distribution of rolling element. Hou measured the load between the roller and the outer ring of the cylindrical roller bearing by modifying the bearing housing and attaching the strain gauge to the outer ring. Then, the authors applied this technique to gearbox bearings of high-speed rail, and the history of bearing load was obtained. Sebastien installed a capacitive probe on the bearing housing and measured the displacement of the bearing outer ring. The bearing load variation is determined based on time-frequency domain analysis.  Marconnet housed the capacitive probes in the angular contact ball bearing housing. The displacement of the outer raceway when the rolling body passes through was precisely measured, and the rolling element load was obtained. However, these techniques are to destroy the bearing structure so that the measured point is closer to the outer raceway or installed in the rolling element, which is different form the actual bearing operation condition. However, this method destroys the integrity of the bearing and is difficult to be used in practice.

Ultrasonic measurement can directly measure the contact interface inside the bearing. The collected signals are easy to identify and process. Ultrasonic reflectometry succeeded in detecting bearing operation parameters such as oil film thickness and roller revolution speed, outer raceway deflection and so on. However, this technique has not been used for operation parameter monitoring when the bearing is under abnormal state.

In this paper, the standard roller is replaced by a roller with smaller diameter to simulate bearing wear in the cylindrical roller bearing test rig. The ultrasonic measurements obtained from roller load variation with different bearing clearance are presented. The current research aims to show the capabilities of ultrasound to measure bearing dynamic characteristic nondestructively.

Presenting Author: Rui Zhou Xi 'an Jiaotong University

Presenting Author Biography: He received his B.S. degree in mechanical design manufacture and automation from Sichuan University, Chengdu, China, in 2018. He is currently studying his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China. His ongoing research focuses on the ultrasonic measurement of bearing operation parameters and
health monitoring.

Authors:

Rui Zhou Xi 'an Jiaotong University
Li Chen Xi'an Jiaotong University
Rongfeng Zhang Xi'an Jiaotong University
Yu Geng Xi'an Jiaotong university
Shemiao Qi Xi'an Jiaotong University
Yi Liu Xi'an Jiaotong University
Heng Liu Xi'an Jiaotong University