Industrial and manufacturing facilities are increasingly introducing predictive maintenance strategies into their operations, drawn by the proactive nature of predictive maintenance and the cost savings, quality benefits and productivity improvements that it offers. In many cases, equipment failures come with early warning signs long before shutdown. With vibration analysis, maintenance teams can detect those warnings early, before they get worse.
Vibration analysis is a flagship predictive maintenance technology, playing a role in nearly every predictive plan, thanks to its relative ease of implementation and broad range of applications, with the ability to detect numerous types of operational issues.
The success of using vibration analysis as the starting point for predictive maintenance depends on your equipment type, failure risk, operating speed, and the cost of downtime. Understanding the potential benefits and applications of this process can save your plant time and money.
What is vibration analysis in industrial maintenance?
Vibration analysis uses equipment sensors to measure and track the performance and function of rotating parts in machinery. Excessive vibration causes wear in rotating components and the equipment they interact with. As this wear increases, performance declines—affecting accuracy, efficiency and speed.
Vibration analysis can detect the beginnings of these performance changes to provide advance warning of potential production issues, well before they affect output and uptime. What is vibration analysis in maintenance? In general, it will comprise these four key components:
- Advanced sensors and technology: Machine vibration analysis includes several vectors, depending upon the type of equipment and the performance being measured. Sensors are able to measure performance metrics such as rotation displacement, velocity, acceleration and more. These metrics provide historical reference data as well as real-time monitoring of performance—and advance alerts when a problem appears likely to occur. In addition, the historical data gathered by these sources is important for understanding patterns of wear or misalignment.
- Understanding of sensor output and vibration testing equipment: Vibration monitoring and analysis go beyond simple outputs. The most effective vibration monitoring strategies use sensors and data to enable advanced analytics such as waveforms, modal analysis, frequency signal algorithms, phase measurement, spectral density, envelope analysis and more. It is critical to understand what first-order data these vibration monitoring systems require, and how to configure sensors and monitoring equipment to obtain it.
- Familiarity with the rotating equipment: There are two sides to vibration monitoring: the sensors and testing equipment described above, and the rotating equipment. Proper sensor implementation and setup require a deep understanding of the nature of the equipment in question in order to be effective and accurate.
- The expertise to interpret and act upon data: As discussed above, baseline data collection in vibration analysis is used to enable more advanced metrics and analytics, which in turn enables the predictive, proactive nature of the technology. In addition to sensor technology, the right personnel must be on hand to interpret data, make recommendations based on this information, and develop action plans to be most effective.
Benefits of vibration analysis
The benefits of vibration measurement and analysis are many, and cover a broad range of equipment and applications—which we will discuss in the next section:
- Real-time, early detection of potential production issues: Proactive maintenance is always preferable to reactive maintenance—that which occurs after a problem has become too big to ignore, often when it leads to component failure and equipment shutdown. Predictive maintenance enables detection of potentially excessive vibration levels that eventually lead to equipment shutdown, much earlier in the process—allowing for scheduled maintenance checks and greater control over any necessary repairs, minimizing the impact of productivity.
- Data access from anywhere: As a sensor-enabled, data-based process, vibration analysis can be monitored from anywhere, including off-site. This creates greater flexibility in scheduling and allows for much easier and more effective condition monitoring.
- Longer equipment life: By identifying when equipment wear begins to affect performance, vibration analysis allows for more effective fine-tuning and minor corrective maintenance, which helps keep components and equipment in optimal shape for a longer period. When equipment is allowed to run to failure, parts must often be fully replaced, which means increased costs.
- Improved part quality: Because equipment is kept in optimal operating condition through greater insight into performance, machines are better able to produce consistent parts at maximum quality.
- Longer time between part repairs and replacements: Building on the above advantage, vibration analysis can extend the time that elapses between major maintenance events that require significant repairs or full replacements, further lowering your costs. It is much more cost-effective to carry out targeted corrective and minor maintenance, keeping the same component in good repair, than to replace it or conduct major repairs.
- Data for root cause analysis: Industrial sensors such as vibration monitors provide vast amounts of data that can be used to improve many areas of maintenance operations. Root cause analysis is one of these areas—a tactic that uses data to enable much more efficient, targeted maintenance through more accurate and focused troubleshooting.
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How does vibration analysis work?
Vibration analysis is enabled through sensors and communication technology, added to any type of rotating equipment. Example types of equipment include:
- Fans
- Rotors
- Shafts
- Bearings
- Gears
- Belts
- Rotating fields such as electrical or liquid fields
Once sensors are in place, they are used to measure three vectors:
- Displacement: Displacement looks at the time intervals between vibration peaks and valleys in a wave chart or frequency analysis. If displacement becomes irregular, or goes outside of an accepted minimum or maximum, it may indicate an impending issue.
- Velocity: Velocity measures equipment movement as a function of time, and similarly should occur within an identified acceptable range.
- Acceleration: Acceleration measures velocity change as a function of time and is useful as a data point for analytics such as dynamic fault analysis.
Here’s a brief summary of the steps involved in vibrational analysis:
1. Sensors capture vibration data from rotating equipment
2. Vibration signal data is transmitted to a monitoring system or analysis platform
3. Baseline vibration patterns are established
4. Current readings are compared against normal operating conditions
5. Abnormal vibration patterns are flagged
6. Analysts diagnose likely causes
7. Maintenance work is scheduled before failure occurs
Common use cases and applications
Analyzing vibration patterns can be a powerful tool for making everyday maintenance decisions. Among the many scenarios and failure modes it can be used to detect include:
- Imbalances
- Misalignments
- Looseness in parts
- Bearing wear
- Resonance
- Gear mesh faults
- Soft foot issues
Issue | Practical Example |
Imbalance | Fan blade buildup or uneven loading |
Misalignment | Shaft misalignment in motors and pumps |
Bearing wear | Bearing wear indicated by vibration at specific frequencies |
Looseness | Loose mounting bolts or foundation issues |
Gear defects | Abnormal gear mesh vibration patterns |
By integrating vibrational analysis with IIoT systems, technicians can enhance their predictive maintenance efforts. They can use the vibration data collected by sensors to make informed decisions about parts that need to be replaced or to confirm the success of recent repair efforts.
Who benefits from vibration analysis?
All types of production machinery with rotating parts can benefit from mechanical vibration analysis. This technology can make a major impact on maintenance efficiency and overall productivity at any type of manufacturing facility or industrial operation. Some of the key users of this technology include maintenance managers, plant engineers and reliability teams.
Several industries where vibration analysis is viewed as especially useful are:
Types of vibration sensors and monitoring equipment
There are several types of sensors commonly used as part of vibration analysis efforts:
- Accelerometers: These are the most common and are most often used for collecting high-frequency data.
- Velocity sensors: Used for general-purpose diagnostics, these detect the speed of movement.
- Proximity probes: These are useful for detecting shaft vibration and misalignment by activating when components come too close to them.
- Portable sensors: These can be deployed quickly in situations that require fast scalability or temporary monitoring.
- Permanently mounted sensors: Permanently installing sensors means they provide constant information that can support predictive maintenance efforts.
- Wireless monitoring and data loggers: These enable access to remote assets or those in hard-to-reach areas.
Monitoring approach | Best for | Considerations |
Portable sensors | Periodic checks and troubleshooting | Requires technician routes |
Permanently mounted sensors | Critical assets | Continuous data and faster alerts |
Wireless monitoring | Remote or hard-to-access assets | Requires connectivity |
Integrated IIoT monitoring | Predictive maintenance programs | Strongest when connected to CMMS/workflows |
In some cases, these sensors may be permanently mounted to equipment to provide a constant stream of information for IIoT applications and predictive maintenance. Other times, portable sensors are used when vibration analysis is part of situation-specific checks such as to ensure proper calibration or when performing root cause failure analysis. In any case, remote access to these sensors is possible thanks to wireless capabilities and data loggers.
Partnering with ATS for predictive maintenance and vibration analysis
As a leading industrial technology service provider, ATS features expertise in designing, implementing and managing vibration analysis plans to enable a predictive maintenance strategy. Vibration analysis services and predictive maintenance offer the benefits described above: increased uptime, more efficient maintenance, and improved quality and productivity overall. We help turn vibration data into actionable maintenance decisions. Vibration analysis is part of our R360® Machine Health Monitoring, helping manufacturers optimize their productivity and operations. For more information, contact ATS today.
