Innovative Lubricant Quality Monitoring Using Optical Computing

"As a leader in sensor development for online oil condition based maintenance, Foster-Miller is pleased to respond to the Office of Naval Research's call for a low cost online lubricant condition sensor system. We presently have one of the few demonstratedcapabilities for online oil monitoring with our commercially available Oil Condition Monitor (OCM). We developed this unique, "wedge" spectrometer since filter-based IR systems have limited ability to do comprehensive analysis in a simple package. Forthis proposed effort, Foster-Miller proposes to use emerging innovations in the field of optical computing to develop a lower cost sensor which can provide comprehensive oil analysis online. The proposed sensor will have the ability to convolute amultitude of lubricant properties simultaneously and provide an instant measure of overall lubricant quality. The successful demonstration of this innovative approach to oil condition monitoring will result in a small, robust, low-cost system which willsignificantly expand the application platforms for continuous online monitoring. (P-020172) A sensor which can monitor the status of several condition properties simultaneously but which is at the same time small, robust, and low-cost is a continuing challenge. Optical computing provides the potential to break the trade-off cycle between moreinformation and larger size and cost of instrumentation. Such a sensor would have broad application i