Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The development of reliable health monitoring and life prognostics (PHM) systems has been the focus of various undertakings, in a wide array of industries involving rotary machinery, to prevent machine accelerated performance degradation, unexpected malfunction, or catastrophic failures. Most machine failures are related to mechanical transmission systems involving bearings. For instance, over 75% of gearbox failures in wind turbines have been attributed to worn or damaged bearings. Bearings often operate in harsh environments under variable and sometimes unexpected loads, leading to their degradation under different fault modes. These faults may not only deteriorate the system performance but may also lead to system failures with equipment damage, resulting in significant economic losses. Through collaboration with Gastops Ltd., an Ottawa-based company, the objective of the proposed research is to develop a novel bearing PHM system for reliable estimation of current and future health conditions of bearings in industrial environment using multi-source data. The proposed bearing PHM system will provide advance warning of failure, enable predictive maintenance, and improve system reliability. The goal is to help the Canadian manufacturing, aerospace, and energy sectors improve asset utilization and remain competitive in the global market.