Early Failure Detection and Diagnostics of Self-Aligning Journal Bearing through Vibro-acoustic Analysis

Journal bearings are widely used to support the rotor of industrial machinery with high loads, such as steam turbines, centrifugal pump and compressors. The problem of journal bearings can cause catastrophic failures, results in huge economic loss and create high safety risks. It is necessary to develop effective condition monitoring technologies to detect and diagnose the failures at early stage. Many researchers have studied the low frequency vibration characteristics as well as the high frequency vibration and acoustics emission in the detection of journal bearing failure. However, these studies have shown relatively little information regarding to the vibro-acoustic characteristics of the self aligning journal bearings. This research focuses on understanding the full feature of vibroacoustics in association with the influence of radial, torsion load, radial load, shaft speed and lubricant viscosity properties in order to develop an more reliable way to monitoring journal bearings. Keyword: Self aligning journal bearing, vibro-acoustic monitoring, early failure detection, fundamental frequency.