Noninvasive method and apparatus for determining resonance information for rotating machinery components and for anticipating component failure from changes therein

摘要

The present invention provides a method and system for analyzing signals generated by rotating components that slip in a rotating machine and for detecting faults in those components. Pulses from a shaft encoder serve as an external clock in digitizing the signal data. A fixed number of data samples are thereby acquired for each complete rotation of the rotating shaft of the machine. Complex spectra are provided for data records of a fixed length with the first sample of each data record always beginning at the same point relative to the shaft angular orientation. Signal-processing means multiply pairs of signal spectral components so that the complex products produced by the data for the component of interest has a fixed phase relative to the shaft orientation. The resulting signal is then shaft synchronously averaged over a large data set so that the sum of the spectral signal components for the rotating component of interest converges to finite constant values whereas other signal contributions tend toward zero. This signal function average is analyzed for the presence of component faults and other attributes. This method and system is capable of analyzing and detecting defects in slipping machine-components, even in the presence of high background noise that would normally prevent such analysis.