Vol.12, No2, 2012, pp.99–104
UDC 620.179.12

Heavy duty rotating equipment, like turbines and fans, frequently fail, sometimes with catastrophic consequences. Permanent improvement in material properties, manufacturing technology and inspection, supported by sophisticated testing instruments and strict requirements in regulations and codes significantly reduced the failures, but they still occur. Vibrodiagnostics significantly helps to avoid failures, enabling to continuously monitor the vibration behaviour during operation, not only periodically, during breaks, and the analysis to ensure safe and reliable service. Rotating equipment is in continuous operation, so damages and failures can occur instantaneously, if the amplitude increases above a limited value. Continuous monitoring has to be performed on selected critical locations in the system. With developed electronics, computers and software, the system can be switched off in a critical situation.

The design and capacity of a recently developed portable device MICROMON for vibrodiagnostics at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, and its in-service application are presented in this paper.

Keywords: failure, rotating equipment, vibrodiagnostics, inspection