Modeling and fault monitoring of industrial centrifugal equipment

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Vibrations of a rotating machine can cause extreme stress and damage to its components, leading to increased failure rate. In a large centrifuge operated at high speed, e.g. a bowl type centrifuge used to separate different materials of liquid and solid, imbalance of the bowl and rotor can result in disastrous conditions due to the extremely large g-force. Early detection of imbalance during the full speed operation is very crucial for these machines. On the other hand, even at the normal operating conditions, the vibration level during start-up and shut-down varies significantly as the rotational frequency approaches the critical frequencies corresponding to the vibration modes of the system. The shutdown condition not considering the larger vibrations to be expected during the coast-down process can lead to potential damages or failures. These bowl type centrifuges have been widely used in the oil sands industry in Canada to perform the crucial oil separation process in several phases of the oil extraction. Their reliability plays a major role impacting the production and cost. To lower the cost and make oil sands more competitive in the market, it is of top priority of the oils sands company to enhance the equipment reliability. Therefore, one important goal of this research is to improve the reliability and efficiency for operating these centrifuges. For this goal, several short-term objectives are identified for this research: 1) to perform modeling and characterization of the centrifuge dynamic behaviors; 2) to design and implement model based condition monitoring scheme for these centrifuges. By accomplishing these objectives, we further aim to develop effective modeling tools for rotating machines, especially for the vertical rotating machines like these bowl type high speed centrifuges.