Intelligent condition monitoring of rotating machinery through electrostatic sensing and signal analysis

Condition monitoring is a key step to identify the health status of working machinery and establish a necessary maintenance strategy. This paper proposes a novel intelligent system for the online monitoring of the operating conditions of rotating machinery using electrostatic sensors and signal processing techniques. This system is capable of providing simultaneous measurements of rotational speed, angular acceleration, vibration direction and frequency as well as an indication of mechanical wear. These parameters usually contain abundant fault-related information about the rotating machinery, which is to be extracted by detecting the electrostatic charge on the surface of the moving part. The general principle and system design considerations are presented. Preliminary experimental results obtained from laboratory tests demonstrate the effectiveness of the monitoring system.