摘要 |
Frequently, particularly in the case of old machines such as engines, transmissions, and gear boxes, particles, or "chips", are produced as the internal parts wear out. When these chips are present they indicate equipment damage and must be removed since they can cause additional damage to the equipment. For over a decade such electric chip detectors have been installed in helicopter transmissions and engines, as well as in propulsion and drive systems of many military fixed wing aircraft. Detectors usually have a pair of permanently magnetized electrodes that are insulated from each other and positioned to form a magnetic field in the small gap therebetween. One of the underlying problems of monitoring wear particles is that detectors can be triggered by an accumulation of metallic dust, causing a false chip detection warning. The wear particle detector system herein, of the type having a pair of electrically actuated electrodes, is constructed to discriminate between harmless dust and harmful chips while monitoring the rate of wear particle accumulation as a machine runs.
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