The inductive detection of wear debris in lubrication oil is an effective method to monitor the machine status. As the wear debris is usually micro scale, a micro inductive sensor is always used to detect them in research papers or high-tech products. However, the improvement of detection sensitivity for micro inductive sensors is still a great challenge, especially for early wear debris of 20 μm or smaller diameter. This paper proposes a novel method to improve the detection sensitivity of a micro inductive sensor. Regarding the magnetic powder surrounding the sensor, the magnetic field in the core of the sensor where the wear debris pass through would be enhanced due to the increased relative permeability. Thus, the inductive signal would be improved and the detection sensitivity would be increased. It is found that the inductive signal would linearly increase with increasing the concentration of the magnetic powder and this enhancement would also be effective for wear debris of different sizes. In addition, the detection limit of the micro inductive sensor used in our experiment could be extended to 11 μm wear debris by the proposed method.
Keywords: improvement; magnetic powder; micro inductive sensor; sensitivity; wear debris.