Determining the surface temperature of liquid oxygen cooled bearings

This paper presents a method for determining the surface temperature of liquid-oxygen turbopump bearings during the operation of the turbopump. The method relies on the fact that the surface temperature of a bearing can be correlated with the composition of oxides used to cover the bearings, using oxidation samples for calibration and AES for chemical analysis. Using this method, it was found that, for the bearings studied, the maximum temperature reached by stainless steel bearings was 600 C, which is well below the 1100-C autoignition temperature of the AISI stainless steel.