Application of acoustic emission technique for the detection of defects inrolling element bearings

The usefulness of acoustic emission (AE) measurements for the detection of defects in roller bearings has been investigated in the present study. Defe cts were simulated in the roller and inner race of the bearings by the spar k erosion method. AE of bearings without defect and with defects of differe nt sizes has been measured. For small defect sizes, ringdown counts of AE s ignal has been found to be a very good parameter for the detection of defec ts both in the inner race and roller of the bearings tested. However, the c ounts stopped increasing after a certain defect size. Distributions of even ts by ringdown counts and peak amplitudes are also found to be good indicat ors of bearing defect detection. With a defect on a bearing element, the di stributions of events tend to be over a wider range of peak amplitudes and counts. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.