Wear Identification in Rotor-Bearing Systems by Volumetric and Bearing Performance Characteristics Measurements

摘要

During the operation of the rotating machines, journal and bearing progressively are worn down. To prevent catastrophic failure of the bearing, it is necessary to detect exactly the wear of the bearing predicting its future replacement. Unfortunately, detecting and evaluating the extent of wear upon the bearing members requires dismantling of the machine, physical inspection and dimensional analysis, procedure that is time consuming and expensive. The main objective here is to investigate the operational and easy measurable characteristics, like eccentricity ratio, bearing attitude angle, lubricant side flow, and friction coefficient, that could be used for bearing wear assessment without stopping the machine. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations. Diagrams of relative eccentricity, attitude angle, lubricant side flow and friction coefficient versus Sommerfeld number are presented for various wear depths. A graphical detection method is used to identify the wear depth associated with the measured characteristics.