Measuring vibration patterns for rotor diagnostics

The vibration patterns of machinery and industrial plants are effective means for characterising their current dynamics and, thus, detecting symptoms and trends of incipient anomalies; or, assessing the accumulation of previous damages. The availability of `intelligent´ instrumentation is a powerful option for the build-up of diagnostic frameworks, based on the measurement of vibration signatures and the acknowledgment of the threshold features for `pro-active´ maintenance schedules. This option is considered with attention paid to the metrological requests supporting the standardised restitution of the signatures, in connection with the opportunities offered by `intelligent´ data acquisition, processing and restitution, namely availability of extended sets of procedural schemes leading to consistent metrological images, transparent conditioning contexts granting data restitution standardisation, and sophisticated programming aids for acknowledgment of system hypotheses