An approach for accurate measurement of lubricant film thickness by fiber-optic Michelson Interferometer

The lubricant film generates in the hydrodynamic slide bearings applied in a lot of large or high-speed rotary machinery and its characteristic directly influence the work performance of these bearings, so it has been an important research field about how to accurately measure the lubricant film thickness. In order to realize the accurate measurement of thickness of lubricant film, a new measurement system using fiber-optical Michelson interferometer was presented in this paper. Some valuable experimental results are also collected, which verified the feasibility of this measurement scheme proposed in this paper. Therefore, the method can be applied to determine the lubricating film states.