Backup-Bearing Lifetime Prediction using Quantified Delevitation Severity Indicators

In order to improve backup bearing reliability and safety, the applicability of using quantified delevitation severity indicators Dval, Vval (as described in [1]) and AVval for predicting backup bearing life is investigated. Degradation data is gathered using a small-scale experimental test bench to delevitate a rotor under specific initial conditions and simultaneously logging the Dval value for several repeated rotor delevitation events (RDEs). Three individual sets of backup bearing degradation data is shown indicating that delevitation severity indicators change as the bearing degrades. This change could enable condition monitoring of the backup bearings where the ultimate goal of this research is to induce repeatable backup bearing failures, and subsequently analyse the Dval, Vval and AVval data in order to predict future failures on a new set of backup bearings.