Fault Detection of a Centrifugal Pump Impeller: Correlation of Pressure Pulsation Characteristics with Casing Vibration Analysis

As a critical component, the impeller plays a key role on thesafe and efficient performance of the centrifugal pump. It ishowever subjected to various defects, inter alia, erosion andvan tip faults. Vibration techniques already used forcondition monitoring mainly relied on statisticalcharacteristics of vibration signals which highly depend ondesign features and types of pumps. They do not show thephysics behind phenomenon either. This study combines theexperimental vibration signature analysis and fluid flowsimulations. The correlation existing between vibrationmeasurement and pressure pulsation characteristics enablesus to develop proper features for detection/diagnosis of vantip faults.

Keywords:

Centrifugal pump , Fault detection , Vibrationanalysis , Numerical simulation