Detection and localization of isolated wear bearing faults of rotating machinery by spectral analysis

Abstract

Rotating machines play a strategic role in a manufacturing process, and it is the case of a cement mill. These machines are composed of fragile bodies (bearings and gears, etc.) subjected to mechanical stress and harsh industrial environment.

Sources of failure are many; the wear and the spalling of bearing, the wear and fracture of a tooth of a gear, the misalignment of the axes, etc. To avoid unexpected downtime and costly, those bodies must be monitored continuously. There are several ways to do that; vibration analysis, lubricant analysis, infrared thermography and acoustic analysis. Vibration analysis (frequency) is most often used by operating a signal from an accelerometer. Whenever a fault participated in a contact, it changed the vibration characteristics of the system. By analyzing the acceleration measurements from an accelerometer, we can identify and quantify these changes in order to establish a relationship between the measures and the type of defect, which will be used as signatures for fault diagnosis system. In a system of power transmission (gear unit of a cement mill) the frequency of occurrences of faults can be known from the geometry and kinematics of the system.

This article deals with the detection of bearing defects isolated in a gear unit of a cement mill by spectral analysis of vibration; which based on a systematic analysis spectral and envelope spectrum of vibration signal for the presence of images of all vibrational defects may affect the body in question.

Citation

Menasri, N., Zaoui, M. and Bouchoucha, A. (2014), "Detection and localization of isolated wear bearing faults of rotating machinery by spectral analysis", World Journal of Engineering, Vol. 10 No. 6, pp. 565-572. https://doi.org/10.1260/1708-5284.10.6.565