Debris Detection in Hydraulic Oil Using a Microfluidic Inductive Pulse Device

Metal wear debris is an important component of oil particle contamination and is also an essential information carrier in hydraulic oil. Based on inductive Coulter counting principle, a microfluidic device to detect wear debris in oil is presented. The proposed device has the advantage that in theory the distance between wear particle in oil and an embedded coil is 0, which can greatly improve the sensitivity of detection. The relationship between coil parameters and inductive change of a coil is analyzed through the related experimental statistics. The result indicates it can distinguish effectively ferrous and nonferrous metal particles in oil, and the size of 19 μm iron particles and 40 μm copper particles can be detected.