Condition monitoring of laminated composite sliding bearings using embedded capacitors

A new online monitoring tool for predictive condition monitoring of laminated composite sliding bearings is proposed. This tool consists of embedded capacitors between the layers of a laminated composite bearing. Preliminary experiments were performed on a glass-epoxy plain bearing equipped with two capacitors. The capacitors were made of three copper foils attached to a paper ribbon. Besides the experiments, a simplified two-dimensional finite element model was built up to simulate the variation of the capacitors in relation to the applied load. The results of the experiments and the simulations show that the variation of the capacitors corresponds to the stress distribution in the bearing.