Thermal Resistivity and Mechanical Properties Determination of Steel Pivot Bearings through Utilization of Ultrasonic Technique

Roller bearings have been among highly inspected industrial products in recent years. Both condition monitoring as well as periodic inspection have been utilized to determine the status of bearings. Vibration analysis and acoustic emission have both been widely investigated in their applicability for the testing of bearings (Yoshioka 1991, Choy, Wang, et. al. 2007). These approaches are useful in case of bearing investigation during its life service and could help the user in implementing predictive maintenance. On the other hand, visual inspection is commonly used for periodic inspection and maintenance. Although, this approach could help in failure analysis and qualitative inspection of roller bearings, however, there are parameters such as surface roughness and surface waviness which would not be detected by this method, nor they would be quantified. There are different approaches for surface parameters quantification. A recent one is Ultrasonic Spectroscopy(Lu Chao 2007). In this paper bearing surface geometry is investigated through Ultrasonic Spectroscopy. Three types of spherical bearings with healthy, somewhat faulty, and absolutely faulty status are investigated. Practical aspects of this approach are discussed herein and comments about future works are outlined