Standardized integral instrumentation of gas foil bearings for condition and operation monitoring

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Clemens Gühmann; Professor Dr.-Ing. Robert Liebich
• Subject Area: Engineering Design, Machine Elements, Product Development ; Automation, Mechatronics, Control Systems, Intelligent Technical Systems, Robotics ; Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering ; Measurement Systems
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 466782279

A gas foil bearing is being developed as a sensor-integrated machine element that aquires the physical quantities of temperature, acceleration, structure-borne sound and air-borne sound in situ without restricting the primary functionality. In addition to these directly measured quantities, the speed is estimated using a Kalman filter and the lift-off and friction state are determined via classifiers (virtual sensors). By means of these direct measured or estimated quantities, it is possible to monitor the condition of the bearing itself and to aquire data for monitoring the operation of the beared rotor system.The necessary wireless sensor network consists of a base station and the integrated sensor node which is as energy-autonomous as possible. For energy-autonomous operation, the different energy harvesting approaches solar cell, thermoelectric generator, piezoelectric foil and piezoelectric vibration energy harvesting system are investigated and combined if necessary. In addition, under the aspect of energy-autonomous operation, methods of data compression such as wavelet transformation are being evaluated for data transmission.A model and hardware-in-the-loop simulation environment is being set up and used to parallelise the mechanical design work and electronics development. For some selected sensor concepts, a first specific implementation in a prototype with an experimental functional verification in the bearing test stand is carried out. The aim of the design is to achieve a complete integration within the installation space of a gas foil bearing. For this purpose, a general design methodology for sensor-integrating gas foil bearings is developed.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2305: Sensor-Integrated Machine Elements pave the way for Widespread Digitalization