An automated vibration identification system for complex machinery installations

Excessive vibrational levels on complex machinery installation, like a ship, may cause considerable annoyance in both the environment and the installation itself. Because noise and vibration specialists are not always available in all situations, an attempt has been made to proceed to a purely automated identification procedure. Attention has been focused on situations in which critical levels are established on crucial locations of the structure (the so-called “monitoring points”), rather than on the sources themselves. A vibration monitoring system that involves a careful transducer arrangement and an extensive data acquisition system is fitted on the installation. Prior knowledge of mounted equipment and dynamic characteristics of structural elements is necessary to constitute a description data base that is referred to by an expert system that supervises the entire procedure, including data acquisition and specific signal processing. Then, after a preselection of the suspected sources, the supervisor system controls a more detailed scrutinization that yields the final diagnosis of the fault of the installation. The paper presents a fully automated identification system that works on an installation fitted with 18 rotating machineries.