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T.4 - Monitoring of Machinery Parameter

Condition monitoring helps marine vessel operators improve safety and profitability by maximizing uptime and reducing costs. Key technologies for condition monitoring include vibration analysis, lubricant analysis, ultrasound, and performance analysis. Correct implementation requires continuous data collection, analysis, and using feedback to implement repairs or schedule maintenance. Ongoing monitoring allows identifying further improvements to machine performance and efficiency.

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Rachel Renti Cruz
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202 views

T.4 - Monitoring of Machinery Parameter

Condition monitoring helps marine vessel operators improve safety and profitability by maximizing uptime and reducing costs. Key technologies for condition monitoring include vibration analysis, lubricant analysis, ultrasound, and performance analysis. Correct implementation requires continuous data collection, analysis, and using feedback to implement repairs or schedule maintenance. Ongoing monitoring allows identifying further improvements to machine performance and efficiency.

Uploaded by

Rachel Renti Cruz
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lesson 1

Vital Condition Monitoring


Condition monitoring can help vessel operators improve productivity and profitability,
while, most crucially, increasing safety, explains Phil Burge, communications manager at
SKF.
One of the key commercial goals of all marine operators is to maximize vessel
availability while simultaneously minimizing operating costs. Inevitably, this means
keeping vessels at sea for longer, achieving optimum fuel efficiencies and reducing
maintenance and overhaul expenditure.

MAIB figures
The MAIB definition of what constitutes a marine accident is wide ranging but in
extreme cases includes loss of a vessel, injury to ship’s crew or passengers, and loss of
life. Similarly, the definition of machinery failure includes many different factors, from burst
pressure pipes and hoses to movement of cargo and collapse of hoists or hatch covers.

Cause of failure
The key issue, however, is what causes the machinery to fail in the first place. To this
figure can be added problems caused by both incorrect lubrication and poor machine
installation and, in particular, misalignment and balancing of shafts.
As a result, it is easy to understand that tackling the issues of vibration and heat
generation within systems is one important avenue that can be explored to help overcome
these problems.
Many of these problems can be addressed through the implementation of best practice
procedures and the use of appropriate testing equipment, such as alignment tools and
automatic lubricators, during system construction and routine maintenance.
In particular, the condition monitoring of vital shipboard equipment, especially
propulsion and maneuvering systems, engines and turbochargers, is an essential process
that is increasingly gaining in popularity.

Technological advances
To address the issue, leading manufacturers have recently initiated a number of
significant advances in condition monitoring technologies that are ensuring this approach
is simple, accurate and cost effective, while making a considerable contribution to
reducing operating costs.
This provides a robust and reliable method of measuring both high and low
frequencies, with low hysteresis characteristics and excellent levels of accuracy over a
wide temperature range.
Accelerometers are generally mounted in a number of key locations on the equipment
to be monitored, with output data either being read periodically using sophisticated hand-
held data collectors, for immediate analysis or subsequent downloading to a PC, or being
routed via switch boxes to a centralized or higher-level system for continuous monitoring.

Correct implementation
There is a growing recognition among ship operators that to benefit from modern
condition monitoring technology and techniques they must be used and implemented
correctly. This is particularly important in the marine sector where operating conditions
are subject to a far wider range of variables, as opposed to many other industries where
plant or factory operations remain largely static.
Data can then be collected using the latest techniques as previously mentioned, using
a combination of portable analyzer, fixed on-line systems and remote wireless or satellite
connections being used to gather and communicate critical vessel information.
Once machine reliability data has been collected, it needs to be analyzed and
interpreted, either by a ship’s engineers or by a remote monitoring center that can
analyzed data in real time and then advise the ship’s crew of any remedial action that
needs to be taken. In addition, such reports can also help create a schedule of future
maintenance procedures.
Finally, the condition-based maintenance program will involve the effective use of the
feedback from the data analysis process. This could involve repairs or modifications to
machine systems, including scheduled replacement of bearings or other wearing parts or
realignment or rebalancing of shafts or interconnected systems.

Continued monitoring
Perhaps most crucially, once remedial work is complete it is then vital to continue to
monitor conditions to identify areas for further improvement in terms of machine
performance, energy efficiency or output. With this continuous cycle of assessment,
analysis and correction in place.
Adopting this type of approach to machine maintenance gives vessel operators a
greater degree of control that can allow them to improve both vessel operating life and
the safety of crew and passengers.
Lesson 2
Condition monitoring
The use of condition monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions
to be taken to prevent consequential damages and avoid its consequences. Condition
monitoring has a unique benefit in that conditions that would shorten normal lifespan can
be addressed before they develop into a major failure.
Condition monitoring technology
The following list includes the main condition monitoring techniques applied in the
industrial and transportation sectors:
• Condition monitoring overview
• Lubricant analysis
• Acoustic emission
• Ultrasound
• Oil condition sensors
Most CM technologies are being standardized by ISO and ASTM.
Rotating equipment:
Rotating equipment is an industry umbrella term that includes gearboxes, reciprocating
and centrifugal machinery.
The level of vibration can be compared with historical baseline values such as former
start-ups and shutdowns, and in some cases established standards such as load
changes, to assess the severity.

Interpreting the vibration signal obtained is an elaborate procedure that requires


specialized training and experience. It is simplified by the use of state-of-the-art
technologies that provide the vast majority of data analysis automatically and provide
information instead of raw data.
The technician can collect data samples from a number of machines, then download
the data into a computer where the analyst (and sometimes artificial intelligence) can
examine the data for changes indicative of malfunctions and impending failures. However,
the diagnostic methods and tools available from either approach are generally the same.
Recently also on-line condition monitoring systems have been applied to heavy
process industries such as pulp, paper, mining, petrochemical and power generation.
Performance analysis is often closely related to energy efficiency, and therefore has
long been applied in steam power generation plants. In some cases, it is possible to
calculate the optimum time for overhaul to restore degraded performance.
By applying this model to the measured voltage, a modelled current is calculated and
this is compared with the actual measured current. Being permanently connected, historic
trends are automatically captured.
Because these systems are based on the relationship between voltage and current,
they deal well with inverter driven systems where the input voltage may be of a variable
frequency and there may be a noisy waveform high in harmonic components.

Model based systems concept


Other techniques:
• Often visual inspections are considered to form an underlying component of
condition monitoring, however this is only true if the inspection results can be
measured or critiqued against a documented set of guidelines.
• Slight temperature variations across a surface can be discovered with visual
inspection and non-destructive testing with thermography. Heat is indicative of
failing components, especially degrading electrical contacts and terminations.
• Instruments then reveal the elements contained, their proportions, size and
morphology. Using this method, the site, the mechanical failure mechanism and the
time to eventual failure may be determined.
• Ultrasound can be used for high-speed and slow-speed mechanical applications
and for high-pressure fluid situations. This value is trended over time and used to
predict increases in friction, rubbing, impacting, and other bearing defects.
Headphones allow humans to listen to ultrasound as well. Ultrasound is used in the Shock
Pulse Method of condition monitoring.
• Performance analysis, where the physical efficiency, performance, or condition is
found by comparing actual parameters against an ideal model. Deterioration is
typically the cause of difference in the readings. An extension of this method can be
used to calculate the best time to overhaul a pump based on balancing the cost of
overhaul against the increasing energy consumption that occurs as a pump wears.
• Wear Debris Detection Sensors are capable of detecting ferrous and non-ferrous
wear particles within the lubrication oil giving considerable information about the
condition of the measured machinery. By creating and monitoring a trend of what
debris is being generated it is possible to detect faults prior to catastrophic failure of
rotating equipment such as gearbox's, turbines, etc.
The Criticality Index:
The criticality index puts all machines into one of three categories:
1. Critical machinery – Machines in this category include the steam or gas turbines in
a power plant, crude oil export pumps on an oil rig or the cracker in an oil refinery.
With critical machinery being at the heart of the process it is seen to require full on-
line condition monitoring to continually record as much data from the machine as
possible regardless of cost and is often specified by the plant insurance.
2. Essential machinery – Units that are a key part of the process, but if there is a failure,
the process still continues. Redundant units (if available) fall into this realm. Testing
and control of these units is also essential to maintain alternative plans should
critical machinery fail.
3. General purpose or balance of plant machines – These are the machines that make
up the remainder of the plant and normally monitored using a handheld data
collector as mentioned previously to periodically create a picture of the health of the
machine.

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