Rotating Machinery Health Monitoring

ABSTRACT: Mechanical Solutions Inc. is developing a general rotating machinery predictive maintenance (PDM) system called Sentry. The goal of the effort is to deploy the system on various machinery trains throughout Arnold Air Force Base. The generalized architecture of the system will also make it immediately commercially attractive to the industrial machinery community. The system can be tailored to specific machinery trains through the use of a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI). It makes use of the existing sensor suite of the machinery with the capability to incorporate additional sensors if desired. Sentry can be easily configured to acquire and record data based on a variety of different user-selected control schemes. Many different condition indicators (CIs) are calculated and trended. These CIs can then be output in a format compatible with the other asset management software. During this proposed Phase II effort improvements will be made regarding many aspects of the software, particularly with regard to data storage, playback, and usability. BENEFIT: The developing Sentry System represents a health monitoring product that does not exist on the current market. It provides flexibility to be applied to a variety of plant machinery through a user-friendly GUI. Inputs to and outputs from the system are easily understood and the problem of data overload is alleviated through reduction techniques filtering down to key diagnostic information. Machinery at power plants, processing plants, refineries, water treatment plants, and other locations will benefit from this technology.