Future bearing inspection system using portable linac X-ray source

Yamamoto, Tomohiko  ; Uesaka, Mitsuru*

We have developed an X-ray source using portable X-band (9.3-12 GHz) linear accelerator (linac) for bearing real-time inspection. This system can generate pulsed-X-ray, therefore if X-ray repetition rate synchronizes with bearing rotation rate, we can get still images without stopping rotation. We succeeded in static imaging of rotating equipment. We start to develop more advanced X-ray generators using portable linac and multi-beam klystron (MBK). The advanced systems use higher electron energy linac and MBK as more stable radio-frequency (RF) source. We used 950 keV linac and 250 kW magnetron for X-ray imaging. For the purpose of more stable operation and compactness of the system, we propose a multi-beam klystron (MBK) as its RF power source. In this paper, we show the basic parameters of the system which stability is tolerable for bearing condition based maintenance (CBM) in near future.