Detection of water content in lubricating oil using ultrasonics

The presence of water in lubricating oil is destructive even in very small quantities. The ultrasonic measurement is an alternative method to find a solutions for detecting and measuring the water contamination in the lubricant oil. The amount of water contamination in lubricating oil will affect the velocity of wave propagation in the lubricant. In this study, a 2.25 MHz ultrasonic wave is propagated to a contaminated lubricating oil medium. The ultrasonic wave propagation time from the transmitter to the receiver is measured so that the speed of soundwave can be obtained. Here, an artificial neural network (ANN) is employed to interpret the speed of sound into the water contamination in the lubricant. The measurement methods discussed in this paper give an average error of approximately 11.3%.