Monitoring and mapping of pitting in bearing steel contacts via vibration-based analysis

Abstract

This paper presents insights into the formation and progression of pitting in rolling-sliding contacts of bearing steels. Experiments were conducted using a TE74 twin-disc tribometer under lubricated conditions with two slide-to-roll ratios (SRR) of 10% and 20%. Macropits were generated under both conditions; however, at 10% SRR, pitting was dominant, whereas at 20% SRR, increased sliding promoted surface wear that suppressed pit initiation. Vibration signals were recorded and analysed to correlate with surface measurements. The results show that pitting increases band power at characteristic pitting frequencies and reduces spectral entropy. Mapping vibration signals on a per-rotation basis enabled estimation of pit locations, showing good agreement with measured surface pits. This approach also allowed the detection of pit initiation at an earlier stage than frequency-domain features. These findings indicate that vibration-based monitoring can effectively capture pitting evolution and severity, providing a basis for quantitative feature extraction and automated detection methods.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Jo Grundy: orcid.org/0000-0003-2583-5680

ORCID for Robert Wood: orcid.org/0000-0003-0681-9239

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