Benefit from NASA

Technology derived by NASA for monitoring control gyros in the Skylab program is directly applicable to the problems of fault detection of railroad wheel bearings. Marhsall Space Flight Center's scientists have developed a detection concept based on the fact that bearing defects excite resonant frequency of rolling elements of the bearing as they impact the defect. By detecting resonant frequency and subsequently analyzing the character of this signal, bearing defects may be detected and identified as to source.