An Efficient Diagnosis Technique for Variations of Shaft-Bow and Unbalance

This paper focuses on the diagnosis of two types of faults, unbalance and shaft-bow, which are the common faults occurring in rotating machines. An efficient fault diagnostic method is proposed to identify the locations and amounts of faults based on the vibration responses of the rotor without prior knowledge of the numbers and locations of the faults. The proposed method achieves fast diagnosis by orderly searching the possible locations of faults, avoiding exploring all possible combinations of faults, and fully utilizing previous search results. Based on the unique search strategy, the proposed method is suitable for on-line monitoring and diagnosis of the gradual variations of shaft-bow and unbalance of large rotating machinery of fixedly rotating speeds, like steam turbine-generators of power plants.Copyright © 2009 by ASME