Condition Monitoring Architecture

To Reduce Total Cost of Ownership

Eric Bechhoefer, NRG Systems

Brogan Morton, NRG Systems
 Barriers to Sales of PHM Systems
• CBM/PHM System are Proven to Work
– Low Penetration into Commercial Markets
– Example: 3% of Wind Turbines
• Why? - Business Case is Hard to Make
– Safety not the primary concern, cost avoidance is
– Hard to Quantify Benefit
• Change Architecture to Improve Value
– Lower “Costs” and Better Information
 Current System Architecture
• System Hardware
– 6 to 8 PZT Accelerometers
• 5% Accuracy, .5 to 10,000 Hz
– Tachometer
– Signal Conditioning
• 6 to 12 channels
• Sample Rate: 60 to 80 KSPS
• Support/Monitoring Services
– Human in the loop to turn data into a diagnosis
– $1,000 to $1,500 per year per turbine
• IT Infrastructure
– Data hosting on local server
– Data also shipped to centralized analysis center
System Layout: Wind Turbines
 From a System Perspective…
• How to Lower Total Ownership Cost
– Hardware Considerations
• Costs driven by accelerometer
– Software/Support Considerations
• Costs driven by knowledge creation (data to diagnosis)
– IT Infrastructure Considerations
• Cost driven by local data storage and associated
maintenance
 Accelerometers – MEMS vs. PZT
MEMS Advantages MEMS Disadvantages
• Cost • Needs to be Packaged
– $6 to $30 vs. $100’s – No Trivial Task
• Bandwidth • Noisier
– 0 to 32,000 Hz vs. 0.5 to – PDS is 2 to 40x higher
10,000 Hz System Issues
• Accuracy • 4 Wire?
– Typically 1% vs. 5% or 10%
– Power/Signal
Error
• Local Conversion?
• Self Test
– ADC, then Microcontroller
– Can Enable BIT vs. No BIT
and RT
 Sensor System Considerations
• Low cost target – move to MEMS
– Analog vs. Digital Sensing
• If Digital
– Local ADC,
• EMI is Reduced
– Microcontroller, RAM, Receiver/Transmitter
• If Multi-Drop: RS-485
– If Microcontroller: Local Processing?
• Many Smaller, Cheap Processors vs. One Larger Processor
• Low cost packaging
– Alternative to Stainless Steel or Titanium
– Transfer Function – Has to Be Stiff/Light
 MEMS: A Sensor Solutions
• Noise Was Not An Issue
– After Signal Processing,
Noise was Negligible
• Conductive Plastic
Package
– 40% Mass of Stainless
– Similar Stiffness
1000 mv/g vs. 70 mv/g
– 12% of Cost of Stainless MEMS Accel, 0.25 Hz
– 6.5KHz Resonance, Flat Within 2% of Low G Accel
Response to 17 KHz
 Embedded PHM
• Micro with FPU Support
– 32MB RAM
– 24 Bit ADC
– Sample @ 300-100,000 kbps
– R/T > 500 KB/S
• Local Vibe Processing
– Time Synchronous Average
(TSA)
– FFT/IFFT
– Hilbert Transform
• Total Cost: Similar to
PZT Accel
Software & Support Considerations
• Algorithmic
– Digital signal processing of the vibration signals for
fault detection
• Knowledge Creation
– Goal: Actionable information requiring little
interpretation
 Typical Drivetrain Configuration
Generator

High Speed Shaft

3-stage Gearbox
Main
Bearing Int. Speed Shaft

Main Shaft Low Speed Shaft •17 Bearings

•9 Gears
•8 Shaft
 Algorithmic
• Process vibration signal into indications of
faults
– Data reduction without loss of information
• No Spectrums/Order Analysis
– Configurable Analysis for Shafts, Gears and
Bearings,
– Several Condition Indicators for Each Component
• Use Time Synchronous Average (TSA)
 Why This Approach
• Large Variation in Wind
Speeds Cause Large
Changes in Rotor Speed
• 3/Rev Torque/Speed
Ripple From Tower
Shadow/Wind Shear
• Gearbox has many gear
meshes; isolate gears of
interest
 Example of Spectrum Vs. TSA
• Due to Changes
in Rotor Speed,
Order Analysis
or the PSD
Cause Smearing
of Frequency
Content
• Example Main
Rotor Shaft
1st, 2nd, and 3rd Harmonics of Ring Gear
Frequency
 The TSA

•Use Tachometer as Phase Reference on Shaft

•Reduces Non-Synchronous Noise 1/sqrt(revolutions)
•For Each Revolution (From Tach)
•Resample length m = 2^Ceiling(log2(number of points in Rev))
 Gear Fault Indicators
• No Single CI Works With All Fault Modes
– Surface Disturbance, Scuffing, Deformation,
Surface Fatigue, Cracks, Tooth Breakage,
Eccentricity
• Use a Number of Analysis to Cover All Fault
Modes
– Residual Analysis, Energy Operator, Narrow Band
Analysis, Amplitude Modulation Analysis,
Frequency Modulation Analysis.
Gear Analysis
 Knowledge Creation

• Recall Goal: Create actionable

information requiring little
interpretation
– Convey what to fix and when
• Single Health Indicator for Each
Component
– Fusion of different condition
indicators
– Common scale for every
component (0-1)
 Health as a Function of Distributions
• HI Paradigm: Map the CIs into an HI
– HI Ranges from 0 to 1, Where the Probability of
the HI exceeding 0.5 is the PFA
– HI in Warning when between 0.75 and 1
– HI is Alarm when Greater than 1.0
– Continued Operations with HI > 1 could Cause
Collateral Damage
 Controlling Correlation Between CIs
• All CIs have PDFs
CI 1 CI 2 CI 3 CI 4 CI 5 CI 6
• Any Operation on the CI to
ij

CI 1 1 0.84 0.79 0.66 -0.47 0.74

form an HI is a Function of CI 2 1 0.46 0.27 -0.59 0.36
Distributions CI 3 1 0.96 -0.03 0.97
– Max of n CI (an Order Statistics) CI 4 1 0.11 0.98
– Sum of n CI CI 5 1 0.05
– Norm of n CI CI 6 1
• Function of Distribution
– PFA Correct if Distribution are IID
– Need to Whiten
 CI to HI Mapping
• Six CIs used in HI
Calculation
– Residual RMS
– Energy Operator RMS
– FM0
– Narrowband Kurtosis
– AM Kurtosis
– FM RMS
• Statistics Generated from
4 test articles: 100
samples prior to fault
propagation
 IT Infrastructure
Alternate to Local Server: Cloud Computing
For Owner/Operator For CMS Developer
• No Seat License of the CMS • Simplifies Software Maintenance
Database Cost
• No Local Servers to Host – Only one Platform to Develop
and Test to,
Data
– Only one Platform to Deploy
• Management of Software Software Updates/Patches to,
Maintenance. • Reduces the Cost of Certification
• Allows Pooling of Dataset of – Configuration Management is
Similar Type/Model Greatly Simplified
Turbines without Risk of • Scalability
Exposing Proprietary
Information
 Conclusion
• Significant value can be created by redesigning
system architecture
– Vibration sensing
• Non-traditional sensor, new packaging and design methods
– Advanced signal processing techniques
• Increased sensitivity to faults under dynamic conditions
– Knowledge Creation
• Automated fusion of fault modes
• Actionable information with diagnostic support
– IT Infrastructure
• Economy of scale using cloud services