2014-Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit
SIPS 2014 Volume 7: Energy Production, Environmental & Multiscale
| Editors: | Kongoli F |
| Publisher: | Flogen Star OUTREACH |
| Publication Year: | 2014 |
| Pages: | 528 pages |
| ISBN: | 978-1-987820-09-6 |
| ISSN: | 2291-1227 (Metals and Materials Processing in a Clean Environment Series) |
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Identifying critical operating conditions for premature failures of gearbox components due to vibration loading by early detection of the associated aging of the lubricating oil
Ulrich Kuipers1; Manfred Mauntz2;1UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCE SOUTHWESTPHALIA, Hagen, Germany (Deutschland); 2CMC INSTRUMENTS GMBH, Eschborn, Germany (Deutschland);
Type of Paper: Regular
Id Paper: 145
Topic: 15
Abstract:
The main gearbox components are bearings, gears and shafts. In industrial, particularly in wind energy gearboxes, premature failures of rolling bearings are a severe application problem.
The fundamental innovation is that gearbox operating conditions critical for premature failures are detected in an early stage before bearing damage by loading induced changes of the lubricant. Existing systems, such as vibration analysis, visual inspection, filters and particle counters, only respond to spalling.
These failures are characterized by usually axial raceway cracks, from which deep branching and spreading crack systems develop into the material by corrosion fatigue. The root cause of these premature bearing failures is vibration loading. The basic idea of the new premature failure detection condition monitoring system is the early identification of chemical aging of the lubricant and its additives under the influence of vibration loading.
The online diagnostics system measures components of the specific complex impedance of oils. For instance, metal abrasion due to wear debris, broken oil molecules, forming acids or oil soaps, results in an increase of the electrical conductivity, which directly correlates with the degree of oil contamination. Thus, incipient wear is also detected early and efficiently. For additivated lubricants, the stage of degradation of the additives can also be derived from changes in the dielectric constant. The determination of impurities or reduction in the quality of the oil and the quasi continuous evaluation of wear and chemical aging follow the holistic approach of a real-time monitoring of an alteration in the condition of the oil-machine system.
The measuring signals can be transmitted to a web-based condition monitoring system via LAN, WLAN or serial interfaces of the sensor system.