Design and Testing of a Sensing System for Aero-Engine Smart Bearings

Smart bearings incorporating self-powered sensors and wireless data communications with intelligence in monitoring bearing conditions can help to detect early faults in aero-engine bearings. This paper presents the challenges in design and development of a sensing system with compact and low-power consumption sensors and the procedures for sensor performance evaluation under the requirements of aerospace standard. Industrial standard DO160 testing is necessary for preliminary testing of the smart sensing system prior to being installed in aero-engine, thus a laboratory test procedure has been developed for sensor performance evaluation for the smart aero-engine bearings in this project. As a case study, this paper presents the details and results of the accelerometer evaluation following the requirements in DO160.