Rolling element bearings are among the most common components to be found in industrial rotating machinery.

They are found in industries from agriculture to aerospace, in equipment as diverse as paper mill rollers to the Space Shuttle Main Engine turbomachinery. The key factors which are addressed in this report include the underlying science of bearing vibration, bearing kinematics and dynamics, bearing life, vibration measurement, signal processing techniques and prognosis of bearing failure. Rolling element bearing usually go through several different phases of degradation prior to failure. The first phase is characterized by high frequency ultrasonic noise, followed by audible noise, then significantly measureable vibration and finally extensive temperature. Diagnostic techniques available for detecting bearing faults in each of these stages, features of the instrumentation utilized, Understanding how and why bearings fail, and understanding how the various vibration analysis techniques work, enables you to get a very early warning of bearing damage, which in turn enables you to be in control of your maintenance and production. If you take care with the data collection methods and settings, and monitor the bearings frequently, you should have fewer unexpected catastrophic bearing failures. And if you take care of the root cause of bearing failures, you will have an even smaller number of failed bearings. Implementing these techniques may take some work, and it may seem that there is no time to make the appropriate changes, but the only way to get out of fire fighting mode is to stop the fires from starting in the first place I would like to describe how the vibration changes in general terms. In classical teaching, bearing vibration is all about the four forcing frequencies: ball pass outer race (BPFO), ball pas inner race (BPFI), ball spin (BSF), and cage or fundamental

train frequency (FTF). We will discuss these in more depth in a moment, but first I want to describe the movement of broadband energy. If a bearing is poorly lubricated, we can detect an increase in the level of noise at very high frequencies. It is not a specific, single frequency; instead it will depend on a number of factors to do with the machines construction. Suffice to say that you cannot hear it; it is well above your hearing range. As the state of lubrication worsens, the level of the noise will increase, but the frequency of the noise will slowly reduce it will move from very high frequencies to high frequencies. That is not to say that you cant detect the condition at lower frequencies; it is stronger at the higher frequencies. As the film of lubricant between the bearing surfaces is reduced further, we will have more and more metal-to-metal contact, causing stress waves to be generated. Stress waves (also referred to as shock pulses) are like ripples in a pond; the moment the metal surfaces make contact, a wave of energy races away from the point of contact at the speed of sound. It all happens very quickly; possibly in less than a thousandth of a second! Even if the root cause of the bearing fault is not poor lubrication, if the bearings are damaged through poor installation, false brinelling (where the bearing has been vibrating whilst it is stationary), EDM, misalignment, or any one of a number of reasons, there will come a time when there is either metal to metal contact between two surfaces, or the stress waves will be generated

from beneath the surface of the metal as subsurface defects develop.