Application of Time-Frequency Analysis Methods to Loose Part Impact Signal

금속파편 감시 시스템에 대한 시간-주파수 해석 적용 연구

The safe operation and reliable maintenance of nuclear power plants is one of the most fundamental and important tasks. It is known that a loose part such as a disengaged and drifting metal inside of reactor coolant systems might lead to a serious damage because of their impact on the components of the coolant system. In order to estimate the impact position of a loose par, three accelerometers attached to the wall of the coolant system have been used. These accelerometers measure the vibration of the coolant system induced by loose part impact. In the conventional analysis system, the low pass filtered version of the vibration data was used for the estimation of the position of a loose part. It is often difficult to identify the initial point of the impact signal by using just a low passed time signal because the impact wave is dispersed during propagation into the sensor. In this paper, the impact signal is analysed by use of various time frequency methods including the short time Fourier transform(STFT), the wavelet transform, and the Wigner-Vill distribution for finding a convenient way to identify the starting point of a impact signal and their advantages and limits are discussed.