No.

04 - October 2002

the condition monitoring magazine of PRFTECHNIK AG and Flender Service GmbH

PRFTECHNIK and FLENDER SERVICE

The benefit of joining forces

Online condition monitoring has developed into the state of the art for
certain systems. At the same time, the
market shows that it is often not enough
to simply deliver a functioning system
consisting of sensors, hardware and software. Many system operators also want
to purchase a diagnostic service in the
form of telediagnosis by a competent
Condition monitoring application:

partner, as they do not possess the necessary know-how themselves. The industrial sector of wind-powered energy can
be cited as a typical example. A number
of respected insurance companies will
only insure the systems if certain components are replaced after a specified inspection interval. An extension of the
interval can only be achieved by suitable
Continued on page 2 8

Steel mill with

automatic overload monitoring

In this issue:
PRFTECHNIK AG & Flender Service:
The benefit of joining forces
Steel mill with automatic overload
monitoring
Digital and software-supported
teleservice (2)
Level 1: Characteristic values of roller bearings
Level 2: Basic rules for the
measurement of frequency spectra
Aligning a test stand for injection
controllers used in Tornado engines
News & tradefair dates

Dr.Becker, Herne
Torque is the one of the most important parameter in drive technology. The
size of the torque and the type of
torque stress plays a considerable part
in the operational safety of drives - not
only in the steel mill. If, for example, an
increase in performance is to take place
in a pilger rolling mill, the torque must
be measured and/or overload conditions must be automatically recorded.
At the former Mannesmann Rhrenwerke in Dsseldorf a pilger rolling mill
built in 1921, which produced seamless
tubes, had reached its technical limits.
Until 1998 the pilger rolling mill had
been driven by a slow speed motor via a
9 meter high flywheel. Peak torques
were even restricted by wooden breaking elements made of beechwood.
Flender Service was awarded the contract to design, deliver and install all the
mechanical drive components, oil station, foundation and torque monitoring
system for the new drive. The gear
shown in the figure on the right was
dimensioned for an output torque of
around 6 million Nm. To protect the
gearbox from short term load pulses,
which can occur during the pilger process, the safety clutch shown in Fig. 3
was employed to separate the drive if an
overload occurs. But how reliably does
the safety clutch operate? If it is set too
high, the drive can become overloaded.
1

If it is set too low, the pilger process does

not work properly.
Apart from simulation calculations,
only continuous torque measurements
during operation in the steel mill could
help here. To meet the adverse environmental conditions, the 900 mm diameter transmission drive shaft was specifically modified during the construction
phase to allow the strain gages and
telemetry components being installed in
a protected area. The installation and
the calibration of the strain gages were

carried out even before the first pilgermill stroke, so that the stresses in the
new type of drive were available during
the start-up phase. After the first pilgermill rolled tubes, the load trends showed
themselves to be more severe than were
specified and the stresses had to be
continuously measured with a sampling
rate of 1000 Hz, i.e. with 1000 measured values per second. No problem for
the DriveAnalysator in the way it was
installed by Flender Service. Fig. 1
shows four measurements in which the

The condition monitoring magazin

torques were automatically recorded

with a 1 second prehistory and 15 seconds of posthistory if they exceeded 4
million Nm. In less than 1/10 second,
the torque of a pilger stroke increases
steeply from almost zero to 4 million
Nm. The flywheels (Fig. 2) then momentarily ensure that the machine continues
at the same RPM during the pilger
stroke. A pause (0.8 sec.) then follows
during which the motor accelerates the
drive up to the nominal RPM again
before the next pilger stroke occurs. If a
protection shut down occurs due to
overload, the shift overseer checks the
current switch-off torque and activates
the overload coupling again. Without
torque measurement, we could not continue, was the comment from Mr. Fahl,
in Dsseldorf.
Since then, 4 years have passed. Thousands of tubes have passed through the
pilger rolling mill. Both the performance
ratings as well as the working RPMs
were increased step-by-step in a controlled fashion by the mill operator using the results of the torque measurements. Temperatures, vibrations and displacements are also monitored by the
DriveAnalysator.
Similarly, loads as well as wear and
tear can also be monitored in other
applications and industrial sectors. Fig.
4 shows an installation on a turbocompressor where the torques are measured
and evaluated in the same way and, if
limiting values are exceeded, the measurement results are remotely transmitted immediately by eMail. Thus, even
rarely occurring overload phenomena
such as terminal short circuits can be
measured and incorporated in the drive
dimensioning.

8 Continued from page 1:

CONDITION MONITORING. Therefore,
some insurers demand that in addition
to suitable monitoring systems telediagnosis must be carried out by a competent partner. The reasoning behind this
is the complexity of the monitoring task.
Condition diagnosis on the high-performance gears and drive trains employed
by these systems is extremely exacting

Fig. 1: Four automatically recorded stress curves with a 1-sec. prehistory and 15-sec. posthistory.

Fig. 2: Assembly of the gear with the oil

station by Flender Service

Fig. 3: Safety clutch before assembly

Preview
In our April issue you can read about:
Fig. 4: Installation of a strain gage on a
turbocompressor drive

CM application: Insurance cover for

wind-driven energy plants only with
condition monitoring
Level 1 Basic course:
Overview of vibration norms

as a result of the general conditions and

requires a great deal of experience. For
this reason, Flender Service and the
PRFTECHNIK Condition Monitoring
have agreed to collaborate very closely
in this field. Together, both companies
are in a position to offer optimized
solutions.

Level 2 Basic rules Part 5: How do I

calculate the excitation and damage
frequencies of planetary gears?
Technology: Worldwide access to condition monitoring systems at local rates
Application: Condition monitoring of
large-scale open mining equipment in
Poland using modern Internet technology

The condition monitoring magazin

Technology

Digital and software-supported teleservice (2)

Roland Schhle, Mathias Luft, Franz Lebitsch
Online condition monitoring systems
should automate the monitoring of machines and systems as far as possible. For
years there have also been efforts to
automate the diagnostics with the aid of
knowledge-based algorithms. The problem is that, in complex aggregates and
special machines, an extensive learning
period is required for the system. The
diagnostic system must either be supplied with a representative learning
sample, consisting of the relevant diagnostic features and assigned condition
and damage categories, or it must be
capable of learning by itself. However,
without any additional information or
extensive diagnostics, it is only able at
best to determine general deviations
from normal operating conditions.
There are almost never sufficient
learning samples available or, alternatively, the overheads used for the system
configuration are disproportionately
high in the case of complex aggregates,
with possibly the most diverse operating
conditions, and, consequently, very expensive.
At the moment, one realistic strategy
is the automation of data recording (depending on operating conditions), data
preprocessing (with threshold comparison) and data provision (auto-upload,
eMail). The in-depth diagnosis itself is
then carried out by an experienced vibration specialist who due to his experience is able to consolidate even ambiguous data material into a relatively
reliable diagnostic statement.

Characteristic value trends

The basis of condition monitoring is

the recording of characteristic values in
the form of characteristic value trends.
These values can simply be broadband
characteristic values, such as the effective vibration velocity veff acc. to ISO
10816/3, or complex characteristic values such as the spectral performance in
a narrow frequency band. Using an
adaptive storage algorithm that evaluates the amplitude changes of measured
value to measured value, the trend data
are compressed so that the storage of an
average trend history is possible even if

system resources are limited.

Vibration signals
After commissioning or auditing, the
reference signals, e.g. amplitude spectra
of the vibration velocity or envelope
spectra of the vibration acceleration,
should be recorded in order to use them
for comparison with the original condition in subsequent diagnostics. The most
crucial vibration signals should be recorded cyclically or triggered by specific
conditions, and continuously updated in
a ring memory.
In order for these signals to be suitable
for diagnosis, they must be measured
during representative operating conditions. For example, in aggregates with
an instationary running behaviour, it
may be necessary to release diagnostic
measurements that depend on the load
and RPM (measurement only at rated
load and rated RPM or, if necessary,
during idling).
If the thresholds of characteristic overall values are exceeded, alarm signals
are automatically measured and stored
while alerting the operator to an alarm
condition.
In this way, the diagnostic specialist
can immediately access authentic data
material after logging into the system.
This is the crucial factor that actually

enables the effective functioning of

telemonitoring systems at all.
This especially applies to systems with
changeable operating conditions. In this
case, it is possible that, when the expert
dials into the system, representative operating conditions are not present and,
thus, manual resolution of a diagnostic
measurement would make no sense.

Data storage
Vibration signals are also held in ring
memories in the same way as the trend
data, so that the most current signals are
always available in the data memory of
the monitoring system. From here, these
data can be sent over the Intranet or
Internet by an integrated eMail server.
As a result, this enables optimum data
management in the case of an alarm. All
the relevant diagnostic data are immediately and automatically sent to the specialists via eMail and are thus available
for immediate diagnosis an enormous
advantage in being able to react to
changes in condition.
Provided that a database is used for
long-term data archiving, the data can
be automatically transmitted from the
monitoring system to the database by
the data server.

The condition monitoring magazin

Level 1 Condition Monitoring Basics

Characteristic values of roller bearings

Glossary of technical
terms
Did you know?
IP address
The IP address is a series of 4 numbers (e.g.
198.168.1.131) that is required for the unambiguous identification of a TCP/IP communication participant in a specific network.

Dieter Franke
For many years broadband characteristic values have been successfully used
for the evaluation of high frequency
vibrations in the diagnosis and monitoring of roller bearings during operation.
However, in contrast to machine vibration, there are some restrictions and
measurement rules that must be observed. Consequently, their use is restricted to simple roller bearings, which

also including the transducer resonance,

that then react more sensitively.
Peak values (max. value in the case of
the shock pulse) form characteristic values that put simply result from the
shock to the roller race of passing
through a pot hole. The effective value
(carpet value in the case of shock pulse)
that reproduces the rolling noise of a
smooth or rough race is also deter-

have no other source of vibrations that

could be louder than the roller bearing. Thus, they are applicable for the
majority of all machines on fans, motors, pumps and belt-type drums.
High frequency vibrations are caused
by frictional processes as well as by the
rolling components of the roller bearing. This does not involve the vibration
of whole components with their large
mass in a measurable deflection, but
shockwaves that pass through the body.
Everyone is familiar with listening to a
roller bearing with a screwdriver and
hearing the typical audible rattling
sound or humming running noise.
The main evaluation variable for this
is the vibration acceleration with its
higher temporal deflections.
These are recorded in a linear frequency range of the acceleration transducers
that is as wide as possible, up to 10 or 20
kHz. The lower frequency limit recommended for this is 1 kHz or lower in
order to separate high frequency vibrations from machine vibrations. The range
above the 10 times multiple of the rotating frequency has been proven to be
suitable. These measurements can also
be carried out up to 40 kHz for example,

mined. The main objective of this characteristic value measurement is the recognition of this race damage according
to its severity.
For almost four decades, the shock
pulse method has been used for the
above-mentioned bearings for machines
driven by asynchronous motors (7503000 1/min). This method takes advantage of the high sensitivity in the accelerometer resonance (around 32-36
kHz). A great advantage is the possibility of standardizing the logarithmic characteristic values in dB to the shaft diameter and RPM of the bearing. Thus,
different bearings can be compared with
one another and global threshold values
can be recommended. The main problem in the roller bearing measurement
the determination of threshold values
is thus resolved.
However, a sufficiently reliable evaluation is only enabled by a trend curve
measured over a longer period of time.
One-off measurements only provide a
rough orientation.
There are other similar special characteristic values from other manufacturers
that, however, are subject to limitations in
comparison to the possibilities mentioned.

TCP/IP port:
Each TCP/IP data package contains the IP
address and port number of the recipient
and of the sender. The port number enables the demarcation of different recipients on a network-node point (router, PC,
monitoring system). Using the port number, the TCP/IP protocol software can forward the incoming package to the correct
recipient. This enables several information
streams to be transmitted in parallel on a
single line.
HTTP:
HTTP is the abbreviation for Hypertext
Transmission Protocol. It is responsible for
the handling of HTML pages within the
Web. HTTP is a protocol on a TCP/IP platform, which the Web server and Web client
use to communicate.
FTP:
FTP is named after the application protocol
it uses: the File Transfer Protocol. The
task of this protocol is to move files from
one computer to another. While doing so ,
it is irrelevant where the two computers
are located and how they are connected.
Even the operating system itself is unimportant.
Java applets:
Java applets are program modules that are
written in the Java programming language. These program modules can be
embedded in HTML pages and are transported to the client computer in these
pages. The program modules are carried
out automatically in the virtual machine
on the client computer. The self-sufficient,
cluster-type program structure provides
considerable advantages as opposed to
classical 32-bit Windows technology, because only the respective Java applet and
not the entire software package is affected if changes / expansions are made.
Virtual Machine:
The virtual machine is the program that
carries out the Java applets on the client
computer.

The condition monitoring magazin

Level 2

Condition Monitoring Basics

Basic rules for the measurement of frequency spectra

Dieter Franke

Part 4: Calculating roller bearingspecific excitation frequencies

age can be ascribed to the components

from the different overrun frequencies
or, vice versa, their absence from the
envelope spectrum indicates damagefree races.

passes through the load zone once per

revolution, it becomes louder under
greater load. Consequently, amplitude
modulation (in addition to phase modulation) can occur in the case of inner ring

The roller bearing condition in gear

transmissions cannot be diagnosed using
simple characteristic values, as the gear
mesh dominates the measurement signal. Consequently, the envelope spectrum has been used for years to filter out
roller bearing-specific components of
the high frequency vibrations in order to
be able to diagnose race damage (see
VDI 3839 sheets 1 and 2 for more
information). At the same time, a search
is made for the so-called rotating and
overrun frequencies of the roller bearing
components from the rolling process.
The origin of the overrun frequencies
is very similar to the wheel rims of a
train running over joints in the rails that
Fig.1: Envelope spectrum with outer ring overrun frequency and several
is clearly noticeable by the passengers.
harmonics
The audible rhythm of the repeated
overrunning of the rail joints changes
noticeably with the speed of travel and
In the cases of rotating outer ring and
is determined, moreover, by the spacing
stationary inner ring (centrifuges) or the
of the wheel sets.
rotation of both rings (planet wheels)
In the roller bearing, the rotating freother formulae apply for the cage RPM.
quencies of the rolling member and those
These can be taken from specialist literaof the rolling member set or
ture or VDI 3832
more simply the cage ro(draft in preparation).
tating frequency arise from
The rolling memFig.2: Outer ring damage on a roller bearthe inner geometric dimenber overrun frequening
sions of the components and
cy is 2nd. order as a
the shaft revolutions. In
result of the overrundamage with the rotor rotating frequency
turn, these determine the
ning of damage in the
and in the case of rolling member damoverrun frequencies of the
outer ring and from
age with the cage rotating frequency.
race damage on the rings by
the rotating frequenThe modulation frequencies are
the rolling member number.
cy in the case of inner
present as background frequencies in the
As the inner geometrical diring contact. Since,
envelope spectrum and as sideband famimensions are not contained
beyond the load
lies in the order of overrun frequencies.
in roller bearing catalogs,
range, only the outer
It must be noted that geometric deforfor some time a number of
ring is overrun and
mations of the roller bearing rings or too
bearing manufacturers have
these shocks are
little bearing play can also cause these
offered software together
louder than those
overrun frequencies. Even short-term
with their frequency catafrom the inner ring
overrunning of foreign bodies can cause
logs for this. This requires
(longer
vibration
these frequencies. In the case of very
only the RPM to be input as
path), a first order
widespread and advanced damage, peraccurately as possible.
frequency also arises
haps to several components, the frequenIn the standard case, the
from this.
cy families disappear in the increased
calculation can be made fI Inner ring overrun frequency
Modulation
frebackground noise level in the spectrum.
f
Outer ring overrun frequency
from the geometrical di- fA 2.O rolling member overrun frequ. quencies are visible in
This makes it necessary to also repeat
W
mensions of the stationary fn Rotating frequency of the rotor
the envelope specthe trend evaluation of a measurement in
outer ring and rotating in- fK Cage rotation frequency
trum as well as the
the envelope spectrum. On the other
Z
Number of roller bearings
ner ring according to the D Rolling bearing diameter
overrun frequencies.
hand, further signal evaluations are reW
DPW Arc diameter
formula on the right.
If a rolling member or
quired anyway to form a reliable diagnoAs a result, the race dam- a Contact angle of bearing partner
inner ring damage
sis.

The condition monitoring magazin

Application

An unusual rendezvous: Tornado meets ROTALIGN

Aligning a test stand for injection controllers used in Tornado engines
Michael Stachelhaus,
PRFTECHNIK VD
The Tornado is a multirole combat aircraft with
two turbofan engines designed for two-fold ultrasonic flight (Mach 2.2).
The aircraft has a length of
16.7 meters and has been
in series production since
1979. A total of about
1,000 planes have been delivered to date. Current
plans have the Tornado being built until the year
2020. The price of the aircraft is estimated at 35
million Euro.
The Pierburg Luftfahrtgerte Union
(PLU) supplies the injection controllers
used in the Tornado. Since it is important that Tornado engines operate with
absolute synchronicity, the injection
controllers must be adjusted to a very
high degree of accuracy.
For this purpose, Pierburg Luftfahrtgerte Union operates several test stands
at their plant in Neuss, at which the
controllers are charged with kerosene,
run-up to 10,000 rpm and then adjusted.
The controllers are 100 x 40 x 50 cm
in size. They are equipped with approx.
100 different adjustment components
for metering kerosene injection and
their operation is fully mechanical. To be
able to adjust all parameters as accurately as possible, it is crucial for the test
stand to be largely free of vibration.
The test stand and gear box are situated in an explosive atmosphere due to the
highly explosive nature of kerosene. The

stand. Next, the DC motor was aligned to the

gear box. The initial
measurement revealed
severe misalignment of
all units (Fig. 6).

Aligning
test stand
and gear box

test stand is located directly in front of

the gear box (Fig. 1), which in turn is
connected by a long spacer shaft to the
drive motor outside of the Ex zone. The
spacer shaft, which reaches into
the Ex zone, has a length of
approx. 1.2 m. For this reason,
and because of the small size of
the wall opening, the use of dial
gauges to align the machine
proves virtually impossible.
The shaft is terminated at both
ends by universal joints that are
rigidly connected to the drive
motor and gear box. The motor
runs at a maximum speed of
2,500 rpm and the gear box
translation ratio results in a
maximum speed of 10,000 rpm.

Alignment procedure
Because of its configuration, the system had to be aligned in two steps. First,
the gear box was aligned to the test

The laser and receiver

units of the ROTALIGN
measuring system were
mounted between the
test stand and the gear
box (Fig. 2). Due to the
construction at the test
stand, the rotation angle during measurement was restricted to about 90
(Fig. 3). The display showed that alignment was far out of tolerance (Fig. 6).

Fig. 2: Measuring equipment between

gear box (left) and test stand (right): The
receiver is mounted on the gear box at
the left and the laser is attached to the
test stand at the right. The ROTALIGN
computer is in the forground.

Non-Ex zone

DC motor

Gear box
Receiver

Laser

Receiver

Laser

Test
stand

Dividing wall
6

Fig. 1: Arrangement of DC motor, gear box and test stand, and placement of the
ROTALIGN laser and receiver

Fig. 3. The rotating angle at the test

stand is restricted to about 90.

The condition monitoring magazin

Fig. 5. The ROTALIGN laser is mounted at the gear box in

the Ex zone.

Fig. 4: The ROTALIGN receiver is mounted on the motorside of the spacer shaft in the Ex-free zone.

Aligning motor and gear box

Before:

The motor and gear box had to be

aligned through a narrow opening in the
dividing wall between the non-Ex zone
and the Ex zone (Figs. 1 and 5). This
opening restricted measurement to a
small 75 angle centered around the 6
oclock position. The laser and receiver
were mounted as shown in Figs. 4 and 5.
The alignment procedure revealed severe misalignment of the drive motor
(Fig. 6). Due to the extremely large offset, shimming alone could not correct
the misalignment. The foundation required redesigning.

Fig. 6. ROTALIGN shows severe misalignment between the test

stand and the gear box, and between the gear box and the motor.

Final check
The alignment between the test stand
and gear box and between the gear box
and motor was measured again. The
offset and gap values were found to be
within tolerance (Fig. 7).

After:

Summary

The test stand had become conspicuous due to the repeated failure of its
bearings (twice in two years), which was
brought about by excessive vibration
levels. When operating under a full load,
the test stand showed vibration levels as
high as 10 mm/s (rms). This made adjustment of the highly sensitive injection
controllers extremely difficult. After realignment of the test stand, vibration
values fell to below 1 mm/s (rms). The
test stand bearings have not failed again
since the alignment procedure was carried out at the end of 1996.
In addition, the time required to adjust the Tornado controllers was short-

Fig. 15: After alignment, offset and gap values are at a minimum
and lie within tolerance.

ened and the lifetime of the test stand

was extended considerably.
After alignment of the first test stand,
a further order was placed for the overhaul and realignment of the other two
test stands.

The condition monitoring magazin

News
WinTControl
with network connection

WinTControl was developed for wind

power systems. WinTControl incorporates special modules, which are required for the condition monitoring of
wind power systems. Attention was paid
to the ability to retrofit existing networks and, above all, to self-sufficient
operation. A separate diagnostic computer is not necessary. If warning criteria
are exceeded, the results can be sent to
the responsible service company without
delay. The figure shows a photograph of
an upgrade at a height of approx. 90 m,
where the first step was to lift the
measuring system including the assembly tools to the top by crane. Since being
put into operation, the measurement
results are sent by eMail so the diagnostician does not need to ascend the structure in high winds!

New CoMo Flyer from Flender

Service in 10 languages

VIBSCANNER now includes

the analysis module

Condition-oriented service is
becoming
increasingly more
global, and also
requires information on suitable condition
monitoring
technologies in
the respective
native language.
Thus, Flender
Service has described the services of inspection/monitoring, diagnosis and analysis in the major ten languages Arabic, Czech, English, French,
Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish,
Swedish, and, naturally, in German.
More details are available on the Internet.

The new analysis module of

the VIBSCANNER data collector now offers
such
useful
functions
as
time signal, orbit/phase measurement,
recording, etc. Further information is
given on our Internet page.

Online Monitoring
Find out how straightforward and economical it is to commence with online
condition monitoring. Simply ask for
our new VIBRONET Signalmaster brochure, or download it from our Internet
page.

Seminar calendar for 2003

Our seminar
schedule for
2003 with 15
different topics is now directly available (free-ofcharge) from
PRFTECHNIK or you can
download it
from our Internet page.

Parallelism of
rollers and cylinders
For the inspection and correction of
parallelism of rollers and cylinders in
the paper industry, steel and metal
works, conveyor systems and the plastics
industry, PRFTECHNIK now introduces
the first inertial measuring system based
on laser gyroscopes. With a minimum of
preparation time, PARALIGN provides a
higher measuring precision than any
previously used procedure.

Impressum

Dates
Visit us at international tradefairs and exhibitions:

PRFTECHNIK AG

Flender Service

All the latest dates are always available

on our Internet homepage.

Drive technology tradefair in Corus in

Ijmuiden/Holland
AKIDA/VDEh symposium in Aachen
with Flender Service

Further dates of interest are given on

our Internet page.

PRFTECHNIK AG
Postfach 12 63
85730 Ismaning
www.pruftechnik.com
Tel: 089-99616-0
Fax: 089-99616-200
eMail: info@pruftechnik.com
Flender Service GmbH
Condition Monitoring
Sdstrasse 111
44623 Herne
www.flender-cm.com
Tel: 02323-940-220
Fax: 02323-940-229
e-Mail: info@flender-cm.de