Open Call for Innovative Defense-Related Dual-Purpose Technologies/Solutions

One of the areas of potential failure is wear in the bearing system that supports helicopter blades and thrust bearing systems. The thrust load carried by these bearings affect the life of the bearings and operational life. Currently replacement of bearings in these applications is done based on time of flight and time based repaired cycle. No condition monitoring currently exists that would allow the measurement of thrust and the variation of the thrust load that would be the indicator of wear of changes in system. Such condition monitoring, if applied, could be used to prevent failure and provide real time data as to the condition of the system. The implementation of such a system would also potentially allow for increase of time between repairs providing a condition based maintained program This is similar to bearing life issues on power producing turbine engines. Starting in 1996 Bokam worked with GEAE to develop a Bearing Thrust Measurement System that has been successfully implemented and tested on these engines. This system has been successfully tested as a condition monitor and predictor since the yearly 2000s. The proposal is to determine how this can be applied the problem stated above