A cost-effective approach to the condition monitoring of multiple rolling-element bearings

This thesis describes a methodology to monitor the condition of rolling-element bearings rotating inside an industrial machine. More precisely, the machine looked at is a mail processing machine which has to sort mail for Royal Mail continuously over many hours every day (twenty-two hours per day on average). For such utilisation, machine availability is critical hence the necessity to monitor the condition of every rolling-element bearing during the production time. This would enable maintenance action to be taken on a rolling-element bearing detected as damaged before its critical failure which would cause the machine to stop (safe mode). [Continues.]