Final Report Summary - IBETTER (improvement in Bearing Technology Through European Research Collaboration)
The programme included 5 work packages:
WP1: Physical modelling of tribological contacts from first principles
WP2: On-line health condition signal acquisition and processing
WP3: Laboratory performance testing of tribological contacts
WP4: Development of integrated diagnostic and prognostic models
WP5: Industrial pilot projects and evaluation of new technologies
And 4 programme partners:
• SKF Engineering & Research Centre (SKF ERC) in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
• SKF CMC in Livingston, Scotland, UK
• Imperial College London (IC), UK.
• Luleå University oh Technology (LTU), in Luleå, Sweden.
Within the programme physical aspects (modeling and experiments) of different failure modes in rolling bearings were studied, such as wear, fatigue, spall propagation, tribolayer formation, lubrication, contamination, etc. At the same time, techniques on data analysis and data mining were used to try to predict damage development. In the final aim of developing a hybrid model of bearing life prognosis combining physical aspects and data analysis substantial progress was made. Although it is noticed that for a full development of this approach much more work is needed. It was still possible to show the potential of both techniques data-based and physics-based (Gouda et al.). Besides the programme has resulted in several achievements ((i)scientific: publications, patents and (ii)social: people exchanged, recruited and trained plus many dissemination activities).
The main achievements of the programme can be summarised as:
Total number of research fellows involved >25
Research fellows permanently hired after programme by partners (and other institutions) 2 (2)
Number of researcher secondment months among partners (and total no of recruitments months) 75 (74)
Potential number of people covered with dissemination activities >37000
Formal minimum soft skills training hours per research fellow 17
Formal minimum technical skills training hours per research fellow 19
Number of patent applications 8
Number of peer-reviewed published papers (and planned) 18(5)