Research: Measurement of Oil-film Thickness

Sponsor: General Electric
Collaborators: Prof. Ceccio
Lubricating oil is used to reduce friction, protect surfaces, and extend the life of moving parts in a wide variety of mechanical systems. However, squeezed and sheared oil films may also reduce a machine's mechanical efficiency. In demanding applications involving loaded moving metallic surfaces, oil films may be so thin that ordinary means for measuring their thickness are not suitable because of surface motion, lack of optical access, electronic noise, or sensor dynamic range limitations. The goal of this project is to non-intrusively measure average oil film thickness between loaded metallic surfaces within an operating machine using radiometric techniques.

Current Research Projects
1. Predictions of Acoustic Uncertainty
2. Blind Deconvolution in Reverberant Environments
3. Nonlinear Techniques for Remote Sensing
4. Acoustic Diagnostics for Reverberant Environments

Recent Research Projects
5. Acoustic Coherent Backscatter Enhancement
6. Simulations of Washing Machine Processes
7. Turbulent Boundary Layers At High Reynolds Number
8. Multi-dimensional Measurements of Velocity during Thermoplastic Injection Molding
9. Beyond Line-of-sight Acoustic Sensing
10. Measurements of Oil-film Thickness