AVM Ultranalysis™ Applications

Ultrasound inspection is a powerful component of your predictive maintenance and reliability toolbox. You already use if to identify airborne leaks in compressed air, steam and vacuum systems and it can also be used to improve how bearings are lubricated and electrical systems are inspected.

The demand for ultrasound technology is on the rise. Driving this demand is a need to expand inspections beyond basic condition monitoring to include detailed diagnostics.

One problem with ultrasound programs is they tend to be unorganized search and seek methods of finding problems. While Vibration measurement is very formal, structured and repetitive, ultrasound tends to be more a case of “walk around until you find something”.

AVM Ultranalysis is a formal approach to finding problems using ultrasound technology.  It provides the means of transferring information contained in the sounds heard in the headset into something which can be shared, analyzed, diagnosed, trended, and compared.

• Visualizing Ultrasound in the Time Domain - Tom Murphy, Adash (676 kBs)
   

• AVM Ultranalysis Pkg Desc
   

• Procedure for recording sound files

Continuous movement of the rolling elements generates a continuous set of pulses.

An example of one pulse magnified on a millisecond scale would look like this:

Looking at the same pulse in the spectral view will reveal at which frequency the energy is focused.

Understanding how ultrasonic signals are collected, processed, and analyzed opens our minds and our eyes to visualize other applications for AVM Ultranalysis such as analyzing electrical discharges like arcing, tracking, and corona, and for evaluating the condition of valves of reciprocating compressors.  As this field grows, so to will the scope of applications and their procedures.