Condition Monitoring of Low Speed Bearings: A Comparative Study of the Ultrasound Technique Versus Vibration Measurements

Abstract

Bearing failure is often attributed to be one of the major causes of breakdown in industrial rotating machines that operate at high and low speeds. This paper presents results of a comparative experimental study on the application of the ultrasound technique for condition monitoring of low speed rolling element bearings and conventional vibration measurements with seeded faults on inner-race defects. The effectiveness of the ultrasound technique is demonstrated through signal processing techniques; use of statistical parameters derived from the time domain, and enveloped spectra in the frequency domain. The results reveal that the ultrasound technique is more effective in detecting low speed bearings failure than that of the vibration measurement.

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“…10 Time-domain parameters such as root mean square (RMS), crest factor and kurtosis are used to analyse the vibration signals. 11,12 The simulated vibration pattern has similar characteristics with results from experimental results. 13 Then, the model is analysed to obtain the vibration signal in the frequency domain.…”

Support Vector Machine Based Bearing Fault Diagnosis for Induction Motors Using Vibration Signals

“…The PR is defined as the sum of the peak values of the defect frequency and harmonics over the average value of the spectrum, and is defined as [20,21] …”

A review of physics-based models in prognostics: Application to gears and bearings of rotating machinery

“…Permanent deformation consists of plastic deformation, which occurs Localized defects [65][66][67][68][69] Crack detection 70,71 Wear [72][73][74] Crack length estimation 32,[75][76][77] Damage location 26,[78][79][80][81][82] Tooth breakage 11,62,83 Geometrical imperfections 26,55 Contaminants 84…”

“…For instance, Kim et al 65 compared vibration analysis with ultrasounds using statistical parameters in the time domain and spectral analysis to detect damage in rolling bearings and obtained better results using ultrasounds for low bearing speeds. Sun et al 72 compared AE and an electrostatic wear monitoring method that measures the electrical charge in the bearing and correlated it with the wear degradation finding that both techniques are able to detect wear caused by metalmetal contact.…”