Numerical Health Assessment of Surface Wear in Mechanical Contacts PhD

Cranfield University

The research in this doctoral opportunity will numerical assess single/multiple point wear in mechanical contacts and its relation with airborne friction noise.

Friction noise and wear phenomena are inevitable in machine components even working in normal operational conditions. Surface degradation, at the mechanical contacts due to wear, has an impact on the noise emitted because of the rapid release of energy from localized sources within a material. Severity of surface degradation can change the noise spectrum, and hence an analysis of emitted noise can lead to the possible health diagnosis of machine components.

Researchers have shown the empirical trend modelling between noise signals and the wear in terms of accumulated signal energy and changes in spectrum amplitude. However, due to complexities in wear tribo-mechanics, it is still a challenge to numerically generate friction noise even for a single mechanical contact which is under degradation due to wear phenomenon.

In this research, numerical modelling will be performed for assessing the relationship between the friction noise and wear in mechanical contacts. Asperities of contacts will be tangentially loaded in such a manner that one of the contact asperity will be assumed as static and the other will create sliding effect for the wear. The materials selection will also allow to assume that one of the material asperity will be worn out while other will be responsible for the generation of the compression wave in the air medium.