Actual trends in machinery maintenance point to the necessity of an on-line real-time monitoring of the condition of the lubricant oil. Excessive delay in replacing the lubricant oil can have catastrophic results, whereas doing it too early produces evident economic and environmental issues. Magnetoelastic materials offer a good sensing principle for assessing lubricant oil viscosity; which is one of the most important properties to assure its proper lubricant capacity. Among others, one of the most remarkable properties of this sensing principle is the capability of being used through a wide viscosity range. In this work, we describe the experiments performed to evaluate the usefulness of this technology for testing the viscosity of different test oils in order to develop a working device for on-line, real-time monitoring the quality of lubricant oils.
