Critical rotating machinery protection by integration of a “fuse” bearing

Minimizing physical damage to mechanical equipment caused by cyber-attacks is currently a challenge. This work describes a new concept for protecting critical mechanical systems against such attacks in which a defense layer is added to the critical rotating machine to prevent hostile entities from damaging it. The machine includes a mechanical component – a rolling element bearing (REB) – which acts as a “fuse” mechanism. It is designed so that under cyber-attack the “fuse” REB will be damaged first, ahead of other critical components. Moreover, the defense layer includes condition monitoring (CM) tools designed for the “fuse” REB. As far as we know, this is the first work that shows how CM tools can be used as a protective layer against cyber-attack. This study describes the design concepts and focuses on early fault detection and condition monitoring solutions via vibration analysis. Endurance tests were conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed concept and yield insights into the analysis process of the failure modes that were developed in the “fuse” REB.