Brochure: Westfalia Separator WEWATCH® Condition Monitoring System for Separators and Decanters

Reliability of equipment is today one of the most important tasks in the operating industry. An optimal utilization of production plants can only be achieved through maximum availability. In the past, operators usually evaluated the condition of machines intuitively. However, the increasing complexity of machines calls for measuring methods that permit an objective assessment. Vibration diagnosis is one such method. It helps operators to diagnose damage at an early stage and enables them to initiate suitable measures while the plant is still operative.

To this end, the machine noise is measured by means of a sensor and evaluated by a vibration monitor. Faulty or damaged machine parts cause, as a rule, additional vibration. A discrete damage on a rolling bearing, e.g. pitting in the raceways, generates, when cycled, a periodic series of individual shock pulses. These shock pulses induce structural resonances of the bearing or of adjacent machine parts. The pulse frequency or damage frequencies are determined by the bearing geometry and are proportional to the bearing's speed.