On-line detection of lubricating oil wear debris based on optical low coherence imaging

Health status monitoring of aero engines has always been one of the research hotpots, and the wear debris in the engine oil system is an important monitoring object. In this paper, a method for real-time imaging of wear debris using optical low coherence technology and real-time image processing to detect wear debris in the flowing oil is proposed. An optical tomography system and a lubricating oil circulation loop is built to image the wear debris and the current profile of the wear debris in the image is identified by an improved contour detection algorithm. The continuous ordered contour is reconstructed according to the flow direction to obtain the surface morphology and related features of the wear debris. The results show that the optical tomography system can detect flowing debris and can image it in real time, and the image processing can reflect the size and shape of the entire wear debris.