An improved ultrasonic method for lubricant-film thickness measurement in cylindrical roller bearings under light radial load

作者：Li Meng; Jing Minqing^*; Chen Zengfan; Liu Heng

来源：Tribology International, 2014, 78: 35-40.

DOI：10.1016/j.triboint.2014.04.023

• Cylindrical roller bearing
• Lubricant-film thickness
• Improved ultrasonic method
• Spatial resolution

Focusing on measuring the oil-film thickness with ultrasonic approaches in roller bearings, a new feasible method is proposed to improve the measuring accuracy. The spatial resolution, which has great influence on the measuring accuracy, is mainly determined by the focus size of the ultrasound transducer. Under the light load conditions, the width of the Hertz contact area is smaller than the focus size, which results in overlapping measurement regions by the high pulse-repetition frequency and then brings about large measurement errors. By introducing reflection coefficients of sound pressure in the non-overlapping areas, the new method improves the measuring accuracy successfully. The experimental results are achieved from the real-time lubricant-film thickness monitoring system for cylindrical roller bearings, which show good agreement with the theoretical solutions.

• 出版日期2014-10
• 单位西安交通大学