A new approach to monitor plant equipment – whether the machinery is a hard to access piece of power plant equipment, or situated on an off-shore platform – provides engineers with access to a far more complete picture of the actual conditions, stresses and events that lead to structural failures. Finally, high volume, high quality, high resolution customer usage data can now be readily collected, analyzed, and used to ensure the development of more durable components and equipment.
On the surface gaining access to equipment operating data seems simple enough. Prepare the generator with strain gages, accelerometers, and other sensitive data collection instrumentation, record the forces as equipment and run the analysis to determine the results. While this might seem like a straightforward approach, the fact is that such short-term or controlled tests often bear little resemblance to what actually goes on when the camera isn’t rolling. For example, knowing that he is being observed, the load operator might take extra care when filling the truck. While other times he might be less cautious crashing the bucket into the side of the truck bed, exceeding recommended load capacity, or dropping the load with greater force from a higher release point. At the same time equipment usage and its reaction to the environment can vary greatly depending on the operator, environmental conditions, location, and any number of other factors.
While one can assume the normal operating conditions of virtually any piece of machinery, there are certainly occasions when equipment experiences an event outside of the range for which it was designed. For example, the drivetrain assembly of a fast-moving mining truck collides with a protruding boulder, an engine mount unexpectedly fails leading to excessive vibration, a front-end loader attempts a maneuver for which it was never intended, and so on. Observing performance over extended time periods in the system’s natural operating environment helps to ensure the likelihood of capturing the full range of conditions to which equipment is subjected – including rare but significant events. Armed with this information manufacturers can better quantify and predict future performance and develop products that satisfy the complete range of actual customer usage.
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