Vibration is measured for various reasons: earthquakes, bridges, manufacturing quality, structures, etc. Widespread use for vibration is to diagnose faults in rotating machines without tearing down the machine.
Vibration in a rotating machine is normal, but high vibration can be destructive. Determining the frequency of the vibration and finding recognized patterns can reveal the presence of mechanical faults. Condition-based maintenance relies on machine condition, rather than a calendar, to identify and plan repair actions. This improves uptime and asset life, decreases maintenance costs from unnecessary repairs, and eliminates energy waste.
What is the difference between vibration monitoring, screening, and analysis?
Vibration monitoring is performed to collect data from machines using sensors - wired, wireless, and portable tools.
Vibration screening is an effective way to screen a machine to determine if it is good enough to run or needs further testing.
Vibration analysis is an effective way to analyze frequency graphs to determine a fault using pattern recognition.
How is vibration measured?
There are three different ways:
1. Displacement is the distance that an object moves from a reference point.
2. Velocity is the distance an object moves over a given time.
3. Acceleration is the change in velocity over a given time.
Which method is best?
Velocity covers a wide range of frequencies for most machines and is best for diagnosing the forces of fatigue that cause wear and eventual failure. Solution: it is most common to use an accelerometer and then quickly convert from acceleration to velocity.
Many think that high vibration means something needs to be fixed immediately, but that is often not the case. Just because the vibration is high doesn't mean there is a fault.
All machines have vibration, and vibration can come from many different sources. High vibration could be from background noise, the process itself, an adjacent machine, the structure, a resonance.
The broadband alarms used in vibration screening provide a simple number that is easy to trend. It combines all vibration signals.
If vibration is high, Use a portable vibration analyzer or wireless analysis sensor to understand the specific fault better. The FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) removes random noise by looking only at repetitive signals.
Visit our website to learn more about vibration solutions from Fluke Reliability, including the Fluke 3562 Vibration Screening Sensor and Fluke 3563 Vibration Analysis Sensor.
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