Development of a smart system to enable calibration of bearing condition monitoring

从汽车和火车到飞机，生产机械和风力涡轮机的所有运动部件中都有轴承。轴承通过滚动接触疲劳（RCF）随着时间和使用而恶化。目前，轴承是在维护计划（按时）或轴承故障时更换的。状态监测（CM）已在许多行业中应用多年，以避免意外故障和机器停机（状态）。CM能够标记服役状态的变化，但还不能量化损坏的严重程度，有时会导致过早取出。该项目将开发一种工具（BEARING-EYE系统），能够根据南安普顿大学的RCF专业知识，绘制和解释故障轴承中观察到的表面损伤。将开发一种基于断口分析的创新智能软件，对失效轴承进行检查，以解释损坏的严重程度，并将其作为简单的数字输出报告。最终，BEARING-EYE将被充实为一个易于使用的台式系统，可以由维护人员操作，将轴承中发现的损坏与相关的CM数据相关联。BEARING-EYE将提供图像的另一半，以了解CM系统的输出与相应的RCF损坏之间的关系，以确定轴承可以安全运行多长时间，从而避免意外故障和机器停机。这也将使维修计划从“准时”变为“按条件”。

Bearings are in all moving parts from automobiles and trains to aircraft, production machinery and wind turbines. Bearings deteriorate with time and usage through rolling contact fatigue (RCF). Currently bearings are replaced during maintenance schedules (on-time) or when a bearing has failed.Condition monitoring (CM) has been applied for years in many industries to avoid unexpected failures and machinery down-time (on-condition). CM is capable of flagging a change in condition in-service, but not yet capable of quantifying the severity of that damage, sometimes leading to premature extraction. This project will develop a tool (the BEARING-EYE system) able to map and interpret the surface damage observed in failing bearings based on the RCF expertise of the University of Southampton.An innovative and intelligent software based on fractographic analysis - the examination of failed bearings - will be developed to interpret the damage severity and report this as a simple numeric output. Ultimately, the BEARING-EYE will be fleshed-out as an easy-to-use bench-top system that could be operated by maintenance staff to correlate the damage found in bearings with the associated CM data.The BEARING-EYE will provide the other half of the picture to understand the relationship between the outputs of a CM system and the corresponding RCF damage to determine how long bearings could be left running safely thus avoiding unexpected failure and machinery down-time. This will also change maintenance programs from 'on-time' to 'on-condition'.