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Interesting Stuff
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Inspecting
Air Intake Systems on Diesel Engines and other Mobile Equipment Inspections
with Ultrasound
This is an interesting application for the SDT170 which is not new
but probably not well enough known for people to be making use of
it; I’m talking about the inspection of air intakes systems on heavy
machines.
Ultrasonic detection is used for verifying system
tightness of all sorts of installations from compressed air lines to
the vehicles we drive and the ships that transport our goods from
port to port. The principle is simple. A system under pressure or
vacuum, that is not tight, will produce turbulent flow at the leak
site. Turbulent flow can be heard and pinpointed with an ultrasound
detector regardless of ambient background noise from the engine
itself. If the system is not under pressure then artificial
ultrasound is introduced which can also be detected at the leak
sites with an SDT170 detector.
Leaks in the air intake system of diesel engines can
cause expensive and premature failure. In some cases these engines
exceed half a million dollars, and this does not speak to the cost
of the downtime and redundancy.
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Consulting Ultrasound and Temperature Measurements of Bearings, Temple
Inland, Texas, USA
I use both ultrasound and temperature
measurements on grease filled pillow block bearings. The bearings are 3
15/16" SKF 2220 grease filled variable speed (1500-1800 rpm) split housing
used on fans. I keep coming up with the same results for these fan bearings.
That is, when the temperatures get very high; as much as 50ºF over ambient;
my ultrasound readings become much lower. The average dBµV data for all
these bearings is 45 dBµV, but for high temperature measurements that
ultrasound number drops to 27 dBµV. That is 8 times quieter! This appears
strange to me as I would have believed that higher temperature would mean
higher ultrasound.
Read
responses, suggestions, and conclusion |
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White Papers |
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Smart Energy Decisions,
By Thomas J. Murphy, "Keep Afloat by Saving Energy and Prolonging Asset Life
Through Maintenance." |
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The Dynamic Duo,
By Allan A. Rienstra, "Ultrasound & Infrared Team Up to Prevent Transformer
Outages." Uptime Mag Feb '08 |
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Predictive Maintenance
for the Masses, By Allan A. Rienstra, "Ultrasound - Inspection Technology
for Everyone." Uptime Mag Mar '06 |
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