Doctor of Philosophy [Ph.D] [PhD in Engineering: Comparative condition monitoring and tribology of spherical bearings] From Cardiff University

The aim of this PhD project is to develop techniques and technologies for detecting failure in bearings installed on rotorcraft. Previous work has:

• Developed a testing facility which allows the comparative / simultaneous testing of four liner samples under reciprocating conditions.
• Produced data sets containing temperature, wear and acoustic emission (AE) data for the failure of liner samples using current liner materials.

• Developed various analysis techniques including correlation measures, spectral analysis, statistical process control based techniques, in order to compare a population of samples under test and identify when a sample is wearing more rapidly than the others in the population.

The proposed PhD study will use experimental methods combined with data analysis to develop detailed insights in the above areas. The student will work closely with the industrial partner and will spend periods of time working at SKF to conduct some of the experimental work.