Diagnosis of faults in the bearings by electrical measures and numerical simulations

¹ Laboratoire des Technologies Innovantes (LTI EA 3899), UPJV, 48 rue Raspail, 02100 Saint-Quentin, France
² LGCGM, INSA de Rennes, 35000 Rennes, France

^a Corresponding author: charles.machado@u-picardie.fr

Received: 7 January 2014
Accepted: 15 May 2014

Abstract

This project represents a straight continuation of the research activities of the LTI and which helped to simulate and understand the electrical response of multi-contact systems. In order to make further progress in the electrical modeling, the electrical transfer model is applied to the case of bearing operation. The 2D modeling by discrete elements reproduces the dynamic bearing. The method proposes to take measurements of electrical resistance on bearings to detect defects. This is an original method that stems from work published in MSSP. Indeed, while many studies have been conducted on monitoring bearing defects by analyzing vibration signals, the use of localized electrical measurements on bearings is a promising approach, not yet exploited. The introduction of the first defects, as a local breaking of mechanical contact causes periodic disturbances in the calculation of the electrical resistance. One of our objectives is to characterize the defects position and the size of the defects, by analyzing disturbances in the electrical measurement.