Study on NDT Fault Diagnosis of the Ball Bearing under Stage of Abrasion by Infrared Thermography

For fault detection about the abrasion stage of rotational machineries under the dynamic loading conditions unlike the traditional diagnosis method used in the past decade, the infrared thermographic method with its distinctive advantages in non-contact, non-destructive, and visible aspects is proposed. In this paper, by applying a rotating deep-grooved ball bearing, passive thermographic experiments were conducted as an alternative way to proceeding the traditional fault monitoring on spectrum analyzer. As results, the thermographic experiment was compared with the traditional vibration spectrum analysis to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method. Based on the results obtained as NDT, the temperature characteristics and abnormal fault detections of the ball bearing according to the abrasion stage were analyzed.