An active sensor for monitoring bearing wear by means of an eddy current displacement sensor

A new and simple sensor for directly monitoring bearing wear has been developed by improving an eddy current displacement sensor. The sensor can be applied for non-metal shafts as well as metal shafts, and in this sense, we call it an 'active sensor'. In this sensor, an aluminium foil, used as a target metal for the eddy current sensor, has been sandwiched between two wedge-shaped acrylic plates and combined with an eddy current displacement sensor as a unit. The whole system consists of this new sensor, a data processing system including an amplifier, a 14-bit A/D converter, a personal computer and a display. The error of this system was about 20 µm, which was sufficiently small for use in a practical plant.