Improved blade tip timing in blade vibration monitoring with torsional vibration of the rotor

Abstract

Due to the complex conditions in rotating machinery, the blades usually encounter fluctuating loads, and failures may occur in the operation. Blade vibration is rarely monitored in the practical rotating machinery in power plants as the traditional blade vibration method using strain gauge method is hard to be applied in long-time and online monitoring. The blade tip timing method is a promising approach to monitor the blade vibration and several special sensors are developed to realize the online monitoring. Based on the traditional blade tip timing method, an improved approach is established in this work. The proposed method can modify the expected arriving time when the torsional vibration exists. The accuracy is therefore improved in the torsional vibration case. Then the blade vibration monitoring with the traditional blade tip timing method and the proposed method are carried out in the test rig in laboratory. The results validate that, the torsional vibration influences the expected arriving time, and the proposed method can modify the expected arriving time and improve the accuracy of the blade vibration monitoring.