Thursday, 29 November 2012

ONLINE & OFFLINE VIBRATION SOLUTIONS


ONLINE & OFFLINE VIBRATION SOLUTIONS

Vibration monitoring is just like checking the pulse of the patient. Now two methods can be adopted based on the condition of the patient. One can be a periodic scanning of the pulse & other can be continuous pulse monitoring in ICU. Similarly for the machines which lie in less critical zone, periodic vibration scanning system is advisable. Machine which are critical with respect of safety, environment & directly affect the production, online vibration monitoring systems are advocated. Following is the broad criterion for implementation of different technologies-

1.    Online System: This system holds well for critical category of assets which have immediate impact on safety, environment & production for example turbines, compressors, critical pumps & blowers etc.

2.    Offline System: Less critical or semi critical assets are good targets for portable/offline technology. On these assets periodic scanning is good enough to judge the present condition.

ONLINE VIBRATION MONITORING: These are continuous vibration monitoring systems employed on critical rotating assets like turbines, critical compressors, blowers, pumps etc. Sensor & system selection depends on many factors like machine type, type of bearings, machine speed, machine components, machine elements etc. These types of systems act as protection safeguard against excessive vibration & also do the condition monitoring job if the analysis software & module has been included in the system. As far as turbines are concerned where bearing of interest is fluid film (journal), Bently Nevada System is one of the best systems that I have worked on. Bently system is really good in rotor dynamics due to its long experience in this field. On rolling element bearings SKF has deep understanding and does a really good diagnostic on them. CSI is also good solution in this area.

PORTABLE VIBRATION MONITORING SOLUTION: As already discussed portable or vibration scanning solution is good for less critical assets. These are the assets which can be periodically scanned or can be scanned when there is some unusual indication regarding performance of the machine. Normally amplitude monitoring & FFT analysis is done on these kind of assets. Other techniques like phase analysis & orbit analysis may also be employed where we have facility to tap the signal through BNC port. Again SKF & CSI are very good in this area. Bently Nevada Snapshot & ADRE are also useful tools. Recently some new players in the condition monitoring field like Fluke have also introduced some exciting solution in the offline vibration segment. They have introduced two models that I have used till now. One of them is FFT based vibration analyser with auto fault diagnostic & auto advisory feature. This is a good tool for the shop floor engineers / technicians who have limited knowledge of vibration. The system is easy to use & interpret the faults.

Disclaimer: The discussed solutions are based on my own experience & are my personal views.

2 comments:

  1. tell us more about Fluke offline solution for vibration monitoring and how it is useful for persons who does not have vibration analysis background ?

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  2. Fluke has introduced a revolutionary product VT 810 in offline vibration analysis domain. The tester has triaxial vibration sensor input which captures the readings from the machine. This data is analyzed automatically inside the tester by a powerful auto diagnostic engine. Thousands of machine data are stored in it's library which provides a soft baseline for comparing the current FFT data. Based on the emperical outcome of the analysis, the most common machine faults like bearing condition, misalignment, unbalance & looseness are automatically analyzed with fault severity rating & suggested corrective actions. Instrument operation is easy & even a person who has very little back ground of vibration analysis can identify the root cause of the problem.

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