CONDITION BASED MONITORING OF FAN USING

VIBRATION ANALYSIS
Hemant Kumar, N. Tandon and S. Fatima
Industrial tribology, machine dynamics and maintenance engineering center, IIT Delhi, Hauz Khas,
New Delhi 110 016, India
e-mail: hemant.kumar.mec10@itbhu.ac.in

In this paper, the detection of faults in fan at early stages is carried out using vibration signals so
that proper corrective measures can be performed before final failure. The early detection of faults
will reduce the downtime of critical equipment. The unbalance fault is seeded on the fan by putting
m-seal masses in one of its fan blade and detection of this fault is carried out by using vibration
signal. These detections are carried out at two different speeds. In the second phase broken blade
fault is seeded on the fan by cutting fan blade along its width into small parts in incremental manner
and then the detection is performed at two different speeds. Both the faults detection data of fan is
compared with data of healthy fan and notice the variation in amplitude at their characteristic defect
frequency. Signal processing like STFT and wavelet transform analysis is carried out in broken
blade fault condition by using time domain data. A comparison of signal processing between FFT,
STFT and wavelet transform analysis using time domain data is performed.

1. Introduction
Condition monitoring (CM) is a process of monitoring the condition of machinery in order
to identify the significant change which indicates the faulty behaviour of machinery and its
components. Rise in noise level, temperature, and vibration, etc. are some of the parameters which
are used to identify the faults in machinery. Vibration analysis used accelerometer to receive
vibration signal from machines and these sensors are of piezoelectric type. Due to the piezoelectric
effect, the sensors convert one form of energy into another to provide an equivalent electrical signal
in response to the measured quantity. Electrical vibration problems occur due to unequal magnetic
forces acting on the rotor or stator. The unequal magnetic force may be due to broken rotor bars,
unequal air gap, open or short windings.
Schoen et al. [1] tested two types of faults, hole drilled through the outer
race and indentation produced in both the inner and outer surfaces and
detection is done using vibration signal. Obaid et al. [2] analysed that act of
disassembling, remounting, and realigning the test motor bearing can
significantly alter the vibration signal. From these papers it can be said that
defected vibration signals can be predicted and analysed at particular
frequency which is also known as defect frequency. Xui and Marangoni [3] carried

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out vibration analysis of motor flexible coupling rotor and they observed that there is a change in
amplitude at 1xRPM in vibration spectra for motor unbalance and change in amplitude at 2xRPM in
vibration spectra for misaligned coupling. Algule and Hujare [4] carried out an experiment on
unbalancing of shaft rotor using vibration analysis and observed that there is a rise in amplitude in
1xRPM with speed for unbalancing. From the previous two paper it is concluded that unbalance
defect is analysed at 1xRPM. Pradhan et al. [5] carried out vibration analysis of the pump by
creating defect in impeller vanes by breaking one and /or multiple vanes. Frequency domain
analysis of vibration shows that as the severity of defect increases, height of side bands (SB)
increases and the difference the amplitude of vane pass frequency (VPF) and side bands decreases.
The below is the relation to compute predictable frequency and their harmonics on which vibration
amplitude is checked for cracked blade defects in fan

f = mfd……………………(1)
fd = nfs……………………(2)
f – Predictable frequency, fs – Supply frequency, fd – characteristics defect frequency, n –
number of blades, m- 1,2,3,…… (for computing harmonics)
Kar and Mohanty [6] studied the defect in gearbox by creating gear no.2 as defected. By
analysing the low frequency and high frequency range steady vibration signals they observed that
FFT is very efficient for analysing low frequency range signals. Poursaeidi and Salavatian [7]
carried out failure analysis of generator fan blade and notice that failure of blade occurs at the
junction of blade and its base and at the curve parts of blade because here stress is maximum and
both of them also uses short-time frequency transform (STFT) as a signal processing of time-
frequency analysis to detect the fault in gears.
In wavelet transform analysis time domain data is used to study the variation of defected
signal. While transforming a signal into frequency domain view using FFT analysis, the time
domain information is lost. This is the main drawback of Fourier analysis. To overcome this
drawback wavelet transform is used. In STFT fixed window size is used, but in the wavelet
transform longer window is used for smaller frequencies and smaller window for larger frequencies
to achieve finer resolution of frequency. The DWT represents a signal into approximation
component (A) and detailed component (D) which represent its low and high frequency components
respectively [8]. The DWT tree decomposition is shown in the Fig.1.1 for up to level 3.

Fig 1.1 Wavelet tree decomposition up to 3 level

According to DWT, frequency band for approximation ACL and detail DCL at level L are given
by
ACL = [0, ]…………………………….. (3)

DCL = [ , ]……………………………. (4)

Where fs is the sampling frequency.
After reading many literate some of them are mentioned above it was observed that there is a
lot of research work done on bearing, gears and from that it was decided to do condition monitoring
on the fan by using basics of vibration signal detection. In industries and power plant, very heavy
and large size of fan used for cooling and power generation purpose.When there is break down of
fan then whole power plant will shut down if there is no alternate option and recovery or

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maintenance of plant will take time. So this study will help to prevent the fan before final failure
and save the losses. In the coming section details of experimental setup for detection of fan
vibration are described

2. Experimental setup and details

A fan of axial type having 5 blades and of 33 watt is used in our test. Fan is mounted on a
wooden frame so that proper suction of is maintained and a speed controller is also connected with
fan in series for speed variation. An accelerometer (Type 4368 B&K) is used for measuring the
vibration of the fan due to unbalancing and blade defects. Accelerometer have capable capacitance
of 114 pF and charge sensitivity of 4.64 pC/ms-2 . The output of accelerometer is connected to
charge amplifier because it is used to convert high input impedance to low output impedance. Its
main purpose is impedance matching. Direct connection of accelerometer output to the measuring
system is difficult because of high impendence output. To eliminate this, accelerometer output is fed
through pre-amplifier which has high input impedance and low output impedance suitable for
connecting to low input impedance of measuring and analysing instrumentation. It has integrated
circuit so they can give velocity and acceleration also from displacement. Charge amplifier is then
connected to ono sokki FFT analyser where frequency domain and time domain data are recorded.
The whole experimental setup and fan used are shown in Fig 2.1. Frequency domain data is further
used to draw frequency spectra, spectra were monitored with frequency span of 200Hz. The FFT
analyzer used has two input channels both of which are BNC type, which can bear maximum
absolute input voltage of 100Vrms AC for 1minute, full scale accuracy of ±0.1dB at 1 kHz. The
data received by the FFT analyzer at the sampling rate of 4096 and sampling frequency of 640 Hz
was saved for further analysis. The time domain data is used for analysis in STFT and wavelet
transform signal processing analysis. Two types of faults is simulate on the fan (a) unbalance and
(b) cracked blade type fault and detection is performed using FFT, STFT and wavelet transform as a
signal processing of time and frequency domain data.

(a) (b)
Fig 2.1. Experimental setup for vibration analysis (a) setup and (b)fan

a) Unbalance type of fault

In this category, mentioned above (a), fan is simulated with unbalance defect by putting
various m-seal masses in one of its fan blade from 1.12, 2.007, 2.50 to 3.00 g. and a healthy fan is
used to check the variation. The whole is carried out with two RPM 1500 and 2300 rpm.

b) Cracked blade type fault

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 In this category, cracked blade defect, fan is simulated with cracked blade defect by Chipping
Fan blade along the width from 5mm,10mm,15mm,20mm to 25mm by using a hacksaw and a
healthy fan is used to check the variation. Detection is done at two different

3. Results and discussions

The fault detection of fan is done by checking of spectrum magnitude and characteristics
defect frequencies. By comparing with the healthy fan spectrum, if some large magnitude deviation
is observed around specific characteristic frequencies, then it can be say that variation in amplitude
is due to that specific defect. The monitoring of fan is done at two different faults condition (a)
unbalance and (b) cracked blade and at different speed as well.

(a) Unbalance

The result shown below in the Fig.3.1 are of healthy and unbalance vibration spectra over the
span of 160 Hz frequency. The frequency highlighted in the spectra is 1xRPM used for unbalance
fault detection. The variation at that frequency is checked for increase severity in unbalance.

(a) (b)
Fig 3.1 Vibration spectrum at 1500 rpm(a)healthy and (b)1.12g unbalance mass

Fig 3.2 Amplitude variation in vibration of unbalance fan

The variation of vibration amplitude at different unbalance masses and different speed is
shown in Fig 3.2. It is concluded that on increasing the add-on mass quantity on fan blade the
amplitude of vibration increases i.e. severity increase. These vibration amplitude also increases with
increase in RPM

(b) Cracked blade

The results presented shown in Fig. 3.3 are of the vibration spectrum of cracked blade type of
fault over the span of 250 Hz. First the data for healthy condition of fan is taken which is used to

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compare it with the faulted condition in vibration spectrum at blade pass frequency calculated by
using eq (2) . The amplitude at blade pass frequency is highlighted in the fig. and if the increase in
amplitude is observed at blade pass frequency then the defect is due to the cracked blade.

(a) (b)
Fig 3.3 Vibration spectrum at 1500rpm (a) healthy and (b) 15mm chipping from 1st blade

Fig 3.4 Vibration amplitude variation of cracked blade fan

From the above Fig 3.4, it can be said that there is in increase in amplitude on increasing
chipping size. There is rapid increase in amplitude while chipping blade from 10mm to 15mm and
from 20mm to 25mm (Full blade chipping). The amplitude is also increase with increase in speed.

STFT
STFT is a time domain signal processing tool which plot the spectrogram between
frequency and time. Spectrograms for vibration signal of defected fan are shown in Fig 3.5.

(a) (b)
Fig 3.5 STFT of fan at 1500RPM (a)1 blade broken (b) 2 blade broken

The defected frequencies lines become more yellowish in two blade broken fan as compared to 1
blade broken fan as seen from the above Fig 3.5. The more yellowish colour indicate more severity
level like higher amplitude in FFT. Thus it can be said that STFT is an effective tool in signal
processing to detect the fault.

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Wavelet Transform
In my case sampling frequency is 640 Hz and level select for wavelet is 5 and characteristic
frequency lie in level 2 and 3 frequency band i.e., 160-320 and 80-160.

0.05531

(a) (b)
Fig 3.6 Decomposition signal (a) and statistic (b) of d3 level of 1 blade broken fan at 1500
rpm (vibration)
It is cleared from the above wavelet decomposition Fig 3.6 that wavelet show maximum variation in
d2 and d3 detail component because characteristics frequency lie in d2 and d3 frequency band so
statistics of that frequency band is analysed and maximum value is notice which is increasing while
increasing speed and severity level. So wavelet transform show result at particular frequency band.

4. Conclusions
Condition monitoring became an effective tool in maintenance and prevention of machines in
industries now a days. In this paper vibration analysis of defected fan is performed. The unbalance
type of fault is checked at 1xRPM frequency and cracked blade defect is checked at blade pass
frequency of fan in FFT spectra and the amplitude at that frequency increases as increase in severity
level like speed, unbalance mass cracked blade size. In STFT more yellowish colour at
characteristics frequency shows more severity. The maximum value in wavelet transform statics
increase in a particular frequency band in which characteristic frequency lies. So FFT is effective to
than STFT and wavelet transform but if FFT is used with wavelet than result will be more accurate.

References
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[7] E. Poursaeidi and M. Salavatian, “Failure analysis of generator rotor fan blades,” Eng. Fail. Anal., vol. 14, no.
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 [8] K. C. D. Kompella, M. V. G. Rao, R. Srinivasa, and R. N. Sreenivasu, “Estimation of bearing faults in
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