Mechanical Engineering

The life of wheel-rail in railways and ball-raceway in wind turbine bearings are limited by rolling contact fatigue (RCF) and wear failures. Such failures are inevitable due to higher magnitude of normal and tangential stresses developed at the contact during the operation. RCF is caused by repetitive contact stress along with rolling and sliding appear simultaneously at the contact zone. Whereas, removal of material from the surface by wear is a function of the sliding and contact stress.

The conventional observation techniques from research vessels in the deep sea incur huge expenditures because of operational costs and unavailability of vessels during required times. These uncertainties are limiting the detailed Ocean’s monitoring. Thus, the observation platforms have laid great emphasis on improving the quality and endurance of measurements/observations, leading to the development of unmanned systems such as deep sea and coastal moorings mounted with sensors/instruments for continuous sampling of many ocean properties.