Monitoring the Lubrication Condition of Rolling Element Bearings Using the Acoustic Emission Technique

Lubrication condition strongly influences the behaviour and operational life of a rolling element bearing. This paper presented an experimental investigation of rolling element bearings with no lubricant and with grease-lubricant containing contaminants using the acoustic emission (AE) technique. High frequency sampling and data streaming technology were applied in the measurement of AE, instead of traditionally measured AE parameters such as the counts, events, and peak amplitude of the signal etc. By processing the AE signals with frequency domain analysis technology, the no lubricant and containing contaminants conditions can be clearly discriminated. This result proved that the frequency domain AE signal processing technique is a suitable method for monitoring the lubrication condition in rolling element bearings.