Ultrasonic measurement of roller revolution speed for high-speed rolling bearing

The sliding state of the bearing rollers can be identified by measuring the roller revolution speed. At present, the roller revolution speed is mainly approximated by the average speed of the cage, which can be obtained by optical and electric methods. However, there are some bottlenecks in the practical application of these methods. In this study, a non-destructive ultrasonic technique is proposed to measure the high-speed rolling bearings' roller revolution speed. In order to reduce the impact of time-domain noise on the ultrasonic echo pulse signal, autocorrelation analysis and the FFT transform are introduced. The passing frequency of a roller can be more accurately calculated by using the CZT (linear frequency modulation Z transform) spectrum thinning algorithm. This ultrasonic approach's validity is confirmed when compared to the conventional optical method at low speed. Then, in accordance with the theoretical models, the roller slippage at high speed is observed by directly measuring the speed of the roller revolution.