Fault Diagnosis of Rotating Machines using Vibration and Bearing Temperature Measurements

Acquisition and subsequent processing of vibration data for fault diagnosis of rotating machinery with multiple bearings, such as Turbo-generator (TG) sets, can be quite involved, as data are usually required in three mutually perpendicular directions for reliable diagnosis. Consequently, the task of diagnosing faults on such systems may be daunting for even an experienced analyst. Hence, the current study aims to develop a simplified fault diagnosis (FD) method that uses just a single vibration and a single temperature sensor on each bearing. Initial trials on an experimental rotating rig indicate that supplementing vibration data with temperature measurements gave improved FD when compared with FD using vibration data alone. Observations made from the initial trials are presented in this paper.