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[April 2007] Tribotex is a leading Japanese tribo-diagnositics company with extensive wear particle expertise that supports a number of industries which includes vehicle, aviation and power plants. They have funded a PhD program within the Surface Engineering and Tribology group at Southampton University to develop a real time condition monitoring system to indicate the health of components such as bearings.
This involves the cross correlation and feature extraction from signatures of thermocouples, acoustic emissions, ferro-magnetic and eddy current particle counters, vibration and electrostatic sensors during the onset of wear. The electrostatic technique is a concept originally developed for the detection of debris in the gas path of jet engines and gas turbines; however this research will optimise electrostatic wear debris sensors to detect sub 50 micron size particles in oil lubrication lines. In-line activities are corroborated against off-line analysis including micro-computer tomography, electron microscopy and a laser based particle counter to monitor the evolution of the wear site and debris.
The culmination of data will be used to assist condition based monitoring schemes with a profusion of data, ranging from pre-cursor events, wear rates and mechanisms, thus providing significant benefit to the industries in which they serve.
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