A case study on the failure diagnosis of plant machinery system by implementing on-line wear monitoring

실시간 마모량 측정을 통한 대형 기계윤활시스템의 파손발생 진단사례

This paper presented a case study on the application of on-line wear monitoring technique to a high duty air-turbo-compressor system. Main objects monitored were a gear unit and metal bearings, both shown frequent troubles due to the severe operation conditions at heavy dynamic load. The air-turbo-compressor system needs secure condition monitoring because it is one of the main utilities in steel making industry. Temperature and vibration characteristics have been mainly on-line monitored in this system for a predictive maintenance; however, it has been shown that they are not fairly good enough to give an early warning prior to the machine failure. In this work, an on-line Opto Magnetic Detector(OMD) was implemented for an on-line wear monitoring, which quantitatively measured the contamination level of both ferrous and non-ferrous wear particles by detecting the change in optical density of used oil. Results showed that the application of on-line OMD system was satisfactory in diagnosis of the machine system.