Research on Characteristics of Electrostatic Wear-Site and Oil-Line Sensor with Theoretical and Comprehensive Analysis

Abstract

As a unique monitoring technique, electrostatic monitoring has been proved to be effective on prognostics and health management of tribological system by using electrostatic sensors. Wear-site sensor (WSS) with a flat circle probe and oil-line sensor (OLS) with a ring probe are two typical sensor types for electrostatic monitoring. However, this developing technique has not been applied in actual industry manufacture so far due to the united characteristics on electrostatic sensors. This paper first presents the mathematical models of both WSS and OLS for theoretical simulation. Then a series of contrast analysis on sensor characteristics between WSS and OLS with varied sensor structure parameters are presented. The results show that the distributions of spatial sensitivity for WSS or OLS itself only are similar, while they are quite different between WSS and OLS. Both WSS and OLS are symmetrical and their distributions can be simplified in one phase for further investigations. The theoretical efficiency curves have close relationship between WSS and OLS. The investigations of sensor performances on characteristics and a presented unified three level system have offered a better electrostatic sensor application in future.