Tribology as basis of machinery condition diagnostics and prognostics

A prognosis of the machinery condition is an important potential tool to avoid unpredictable and expensive disturbances, failure and shut down in industrial production and transportation. A diagnosis of machinery condition can be carried out based on online condition monitoring. The prediction of future performance needs, in addition to knowledge of the present state, also a good understanding of trends and physical laws influencing the progress of the deterioration processes in components. Tribology offers an understanding of the wear and friction related phenomena in machinery and their mechanisms. After a short transient period of running-in wear, the wear process is linear for a long period at steady state running but it is close to exponential at catastrophic wear. Monitoring based regression signal analysis offers a new possibility to predict wear progress and wear failure. The VTT Diagnostic Circle is a method for integrated tribological and vibration analysis of machinery condition