Measurement of metal particles in oil lubricant using hall effect sensor under temperature conditions

Abstract

This paper develops a Hall-Effect sensor based system to assess the performance of a lubricant. The measurement methodology is based on the fact that the electromagnetically induced voltage is directly proportional to the amount of contaminants, which in turn affects the state of the lubricant. Two main cases are considered: the metal particles contaminant, and viscosity. The sample lubricant viscosity was experimentally found to be 49.2874 Cst, which is well within the range of internationally accepted values. Furthermore, the lubricant flow rate was also found to be temperature dependent. The output Hall voltage for the contaminated lubricant was 0.8 A for liquid flow rates between 0 to 30 l/h, which significantly deviates from the non-contaminated lubricant. These results suggests that the presented approach is a simple, low cost system capable of accurately assessing the performance of lubricants without consulting the manufacturer's information, even under normal operational loading.