STC visits to China for broadened cooperation
An exciting research collaboration on the development of smart bearings is taking the next step. Sebastian Bader and Ye Xu, both researchers at the STC Research Center, have recently returned from Xian Jiaotong University in China, with the aim of further expanding and deepening their cooperation.
As early as 2019, Mid Sweden University's STC Research Center received funding from STINT to develop collaboration with the Chinese university. But the Covid pandemic got in the way, and research collaboration on the development of smart ball bearings began, but remotely.
"Our collaboration has worked very well, but it is always positive to meet around the joint work we are doing," says Sebastian Bader.
The research collaboration has focused on how to develop the ball bearings and add electronics that sound an alarm when they need to be repaired or replaced. A development that in an industrial context means that costly downtime can be avoided. The research collaboration has also investigated how to convert the kinetic energy in the ball bearings into electricity that supplies the electronics that monitor and alert that the ball bearings need to be repaired in some way.
Shared knowledge and results
"Successful research collaboration means that you complement each other in terms of knowledge and implementation and in this way get further. We have researched this in our respective research environments, shared the results and written joint research articles about what we have found," says Sebastian Bader.
The next step is to invite Professor Junyi Cao and his research group Xian Jiaotong University to the STC Research Center.
"Now we look forward to our continued collaboration, and that we can identify new areas to collaborate on. Thanks to our meeting, we have been able to broaden our research and discover even more of the potential that our collaboration has," says Sebastian Bader.