Acoustic bearing lubrication monitoring using ultrasound

www.sdt.eu - Poorly lubricated bearings are a primary contributor of premature machinery failure. Companies looking to optimize lubrication practices have adopted a conditional approach. By monitoring the friction levels of bearings with ultrasound they can determine when the lubricant has deteriorated and needs replacement. Trending against an establish decibel value, increased friction levels are quickly spotted and alarms triggered. It becomes a standard practice to sort good bearings from those that require the attention of the lubrication technician.

[@joeyperez]

As a vibration analyst, we have pretty much an established experience and reference using vibration (seeing BFF in gE then in velocity plots) as when to optimally call a bearing failure (4"ish" stages). For Ultrasound, when do you tell your maintenance guys that the bearing had failed or about to fail? By experience even detecting BFF (bearing fault frequency) in enveloped acceleration is too early a call. I think using ultrasound is much much earlier and relying on it alone may give a case of like "the boy who cried wolf". What do you do when you find ultrasonic indications of a bearing fault besides adding lubrication to see the signal disappear? Would you recommend a bearing change even the vibration signals (gE, vel) are way way too low? How long does an ultrasound signal go without correction before it can be detected by existing vibration HFD (env acc) techniques? A practical experiment result will be interesting to see, pls post link. Thanks

[@SDTHearMore]

Thanks for your question ! Feel free to contact me to discuss about that ! [e-mail]

[@lexclock]

how much affect the sound of the exterior of an installation?

[@SDTHearMore]

It depends if you are talking about audible noise or ultrasound noise coming from the production. What you can hear in audible range will be mostly be eliminated by the device as it's only measuring ultrasound :)