The Lubrication Regimes Recognition of a Pressure-Fed Journal Bearing by Time and Frequency Domain Analysis of Acoustic Emission Signals

Authors: S. Hosseini, M. Ahmadi Najafabadi, M. Akhlaghi

Abstract:

The health of the journal bearings is very important in preventing unforeseen breakdowns in rotary machines, and poor lubrication is one of the most important factors for producing the bearing failures. Hydrodynamic lubrication (HL), mixed lubrication (ML), and boundary lubrication (BL) are three regimes of a journal bearing lubrication. This paper uses acoustic emission (AE) measurement technique to correlate features of the AE signals to the three lubrication regimes. The transitions from HL to ML based on operating factors such as rotating speed, load, inlet oil pressure by time domain and time-frequency domain signal analysis techniques are detected, and then metal-to-metal contacts between sliding surfaces of the journal and bearing are identified. It is found that there is a significant difference between theoretical and experimental operating values that are obtained for defining the lubrication regions.

Keywords: Acoustic emission technique, pressure fed journal bearing, time and frequency signal analysis, metal-to-metal contact.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2576914

References:

[1] J. Shigley and C. R. Mischke, Bearings and lubrication: a mechanical designers' workbook, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990.
[2] E. Shigley, J. Brown and C. Thomas, in Standard handbook of machine design (3rd ed.), New York, McGraw-Hill Professional, 2004, pp. 640- 641.
[3] A. A. Raimondi and J. Boyd, "A Solution for the Finite Journal Bearing and its Application to Analysis and Design," Tribology Transactions, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 194-209, 1958.
[4] H. Yasir, M. Salah, A. Roslan and I. Raja, "Acoustic emission and artificial intelligent methods in condition monitoring of raotating machines- A review," in The national conference for post graduate research, University Malaysia Pahang, 2016.
[5] V. Baranov, E. Kudryavtsev, G. Sarychev and V. Schavelin, "Friction of solids and nature of acoustic emission," in Acoustic emission in friction, Moscow, Tribology and interface engineering series, No. 53, 2007, p. 10.
[6] S. Mirhadizadeh, E. Moncholi and D. Mba, " Influence of operational variables in hydrodynamic bearing on the generation of acoustic emission," Tribology international, vol. 43, pp. 1760-1767, 2010.
[7] D. J. Yoon, O. Y. Kwon, M. H. Chung and K. W. Kim, "Acoustic Emission Monitoring of Incipient in Journal Bearings," The Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 16-22, 1994.
[8] D. Mba, "The Use of Acoustic Emission for Estimation of Bearing Defect Size," Failure Analysis and Prevention, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 188-192, 2008.
[9] J. Miettinen and P. Andersson, "Acoustic emission of rolling bearings lubricated with contaminated grease," Tribology International, vol. 33, p. 777–787, 2000.
[10] Jamaludin, Mba and Bannister, "Condition monitoring of slow-speed rolling element bearings using stress waves," Proceeding the IMECHE Part E Journal of Process Mechanical Engineering, vol. 215, no. 27, p. 245–271, 2001.
[11] S. Mirhadizadeh and D. Mba, "Observation of acoustic emission in a hydrodynamic bearings," in Technical Inspection and NDT , Tehran, Iran, 2008.
[12] J. Couturier and D. Mba, "Operational Bearing Parameters and Acoustic Emission Generation," Vib. Acoust , vol. 130, no. 2, 2008.
[13] R. M. Douglas, J. A. Steel and R. L. Rueben, "A study of tribological behavior of piston ring/cylinder interaction in diesel engines using acoustic emission," Tribology International, vol. 39, no. 12, pp. 1634-1642, 2006.
[14] S. Niknam, V. Songmene and Y. H. Joe Au, "The use of acoustic emission information to distinguish between dry and lubricated rolling element bearings in low-speed rotating machines," The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, vol. 69, no. 9-12, p. 2679–2689, 2013.
[15] H. Towsyfyan, P. Raharjo, F. Gu and A. Ball, "Characterization of acoustic emissions from journal bearings for fault detection," in NDT 2013, 10th-12th September, Telford, UK, 2013.
[16] C. C. Hai, F. W. Dong, Y. X. Qiao and D. S. Zhen, "The Acoustic Emission Diagnose and Analysis of Journal Bearing‘s Inner Ring Looseness Fault by Truck Wheel," Applied Mechanics and Materials, Vols. 130-134, pp. 54-57, 2011.
[17] A. Djebala, N. Ouelaa and N. Hamzaoui, "Detection of rolling bearing defects using discrete wavelet analysis," Meccanica, vol. 43, no. 2, pp. 339-348, 2008.
[18] W. P. Tse and H. T. W.X. Yang, "Machine fault diagnosis through an effective exact wavelet analysis," Sound and Vibration, vol. 277, pp. 1005-1024, 2004.
[19] Y. Ruqiang and X. Robert, "An efficient approach to machine health diagnosis based on harmonic wavelet packet transform," Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, vol. 21, no. 4-5, p. 291–301, 2005.
[20] A. Panthi, J. Balwanshi, A. Chandravanshi and G. Gupta, "Design and Analysis of Hydrodynamic Journal Bearing using Raimondi and Boyd Chart," International Journal Of Core Engineering & Management, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 109-120, 2015.
[21] S. Hosseini, N. Ahmadi and M. Akhlaghi, "Classification of acoustic emission signals generated from journal bearing at different lubrication conditions based on wavelet analysis in combination with artificial neural network and genetic algorithm," Tribology International, no. 95, pp. 426-434, 2016.