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Avoid­ing Da­m­age in Com­bus­tion Cham­bers

Why Con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing of Vi­bra­tions is nec­es­sary

Com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics can cause ex­pen­sive dam­age to gas tur­bines and other com­bus­tion sys­tems. These most­ly ther­moa­cous­tic forms of vi­bra­tion are par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous be­cause, on the one hand, with­in a very short time they can reach an am­pli­tude that is harm­ful to the ma­chine.  On the other hand, their oc­cur­rence de­pends sig­nif­i­cant­ly on in­flu­enc­ing fac­tors that are dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy or that change con­tin­u­ous­ly, such as the en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions at the ma­chine lo­ca­tion (e.g. hu­mid­i­ty or tem­per­a­ture), the cur­rent ma­chine con­di­tion, the man­u­fac­tur­ing tol­er­ances of the spe­cif­ic ma­chine, the fuel com­po­si­tion on site, and so on.

In short, com­bus­tion os­cil­la­tions can­not be pre­dict­ed re­li­ably due to the large num­ber of in­flu­enc­ing fac­tors. There­fore, they must be con­stant­ly mon­i­tored, es­pe­cial­ly in crit­i­cal ap­pli­ca­tions such as power plants for elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion or com­pres­sor sta­tions for pipe­lines. The er­rat­ic oc­cur­rence of these vi­bra­tions also re­quires con­tin­u­ous record­ing of all mea­sure­ment data, as this is the only way to en­sure data avail­abil­i­ty for analy­ses in case of dam­age.

THE IFTA so­lu­tion for Mon­i­tor­ing and pro­tec­tion

The IFTA Ar­gusOMDS mon­i­tor­ing and pro­tec­tion sys­tem has been specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to mon­i­tor and di­ag­nose com­bus­tors in gas tur­bines and has been proven in hun­dreds gas tur­bine power plants world­wide. The sys­tem can be tai­lored to spe­cif­ic re­quire­ments thanks to our mod­u­lar hard­ware and soft­ware con­cept, so that an op­ti­mal so­lu­tion can be found for every ap­pli­ca­tion.

prac­ti­cal knowl­edge around ther­moa­cous­tics

If you have ques­tions about com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics, you are at the right place - be­cause IFTA is an ex­pert in the field of ther­moa­cous­tics. Both due to many years of prac­ti­cal con­sult­ing of cus­tomers - es­pe­cial­ly in the field of gas tur­bines - and due to our re­search projects.

Com­bus­tion Dy­nam­ics
  • Mea­sure­ment
  • Anal­y­sis
  • Mon­i­tor­ing
  • Pro­tec­tion

Real-time pro­tec­tion for com­bus­tion cham­bers with com­pre­hen­sive record­ing and anal­y­sis tools:

  • De­tect and record com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics 24/7
  • Real-time pro­tec­tion and vi­bra­tion di­ag­no­sis
  • Ex­ten­sive anal­y­sis with the IFTA TrendView­er eval­u­a­tion soft­ware
  • Op­tion­al soft­ware mod­ule IFTA PreCur­sor for early de­tec­tion of vi­bra­tions in an­nu­lar com­bus­tion cham­bers

Our prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tion is the mon­i­tor­ing and pro­tec­tion sys­tem IFTA Ar­gusOMDS with the soft­ware equip­ment TrendView­er Ex­pert C for com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics.

Chal­lenges When Mon­i­tor­ing Com­bus­tion Cham­bers

Sen­sor SELECTION

Due to the ex­treme con­di­tions in a com­bus­tion cham­ber - high tem­per­a­ture and high pres­sure - only spe­cial and ex­pen­sive high tem­per­a­ture sen­sors with­out in­te­grat­ed elec­tron­ics can be used di­rect­ly on or close to the com­bus­tion cham­ber.  If in­ex­pen­sive low-tem­per­a­ture sen­sors are to be used, they must be placed away from the com­bus­tion cham­ber - but this is ac­com­pa­nied by a num­ber of dis­ad­van­tages.

Po­si­tion OF THE Sen­sor

Sen­sor po­si­tions should be cho­sen care­ful­ly to en­sure that all crit­i­cal modes that may occur can also be mea­sured re­li­ably. If the sen­sor po­si­tion is in the os­cil­lat­ing node, this can­not be de­tect­ed at all or only very in­ac­cu­rate­ly. More than one sen­sor is the method of choice here, but eco­nom­ic as­pects such as cost of ac­qui­si­tion and main­te­nance often speak against this.

Real-time anal­y­sis of mea­sure­ment data

In order to ex­tract the in­for­ma­tion nec­es­sary for ma­chine pro­tec­tion from the raw mea­sure­ment data, it must be pro­cessed and eval­u­at­ed in real-time. The math­e­mat­i­cal mod­els nec­es­sary for this re­quire a pro­found un­der­stand­ing of the phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na as well as sig­nif­i­cant com­put­ing ca­pac­i­ties in the field.

Sig­nal anal­y­sis

The de­ci­sive fac­tor here is the fre­quen­cy up to which os­cil­la­tions can occur.  Small com­bus­tion cham­bers re­quire sam­pling rates up to 50 kHz and more. In ad­di­tion, os­cil­la­tions usu­al­ly occur spon­ta­neous­ly and rapid­ly. This makes a seam­less and con­tin­u­ous anal­y­sis with over­lap­ping FFT win­dows in­dis­pens­able. This is the only way to de­tect, in par­tic­u­lar, rapid­ly ris­ing and de­clin­ing os­cil­la­tions.

Reli­able pro­tec­tion of the mon­i­tored com­bus­tion cham­ber

To en­sure this, a sta­ble 24/7 real-time anal­y­sis with the low­est pos­si­ble la­ten­cy is nec­es­sary, which re­quires ap­pro­pri­ate input cards, pro­ces­sors (DSPs) and out­put cards. Thus, PC-based so­lu­tions are not ap­pro­pri­ate. Only this en­sures re­li­able pro­tec­tion and pre­vents dam­age.

Ef­fi­cient pro­cess­ing of big data

The de­mand to record mea­sure­ment and op­er­a­tional data with high sam­pling rates and a large num­ber of sen­sors 24/7 quick­ly leads to a very large amount of data. This must be col­lect­ed and pre-pro­cessed in real-time in order to store and an­a­lyze it ef­fi­cient­ly af­ter­wards - e.g. with the help of ma­chine learn­ing meth­ods. 

Ben­e­fit From Our Know-How

We are the only com­pa­ny in the world spe­cial­iz­ing in ther­moa­cous­tic os­cil­la­tions in com­bus­tion cham­bers. Since 1996, we have been sup­port­ing our cus­tomers with our ex­per­tise and our proven pro­tec­tion and mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems. Our goal is to pro­vide com­pat­i­ble so­lu­tions for the en­tire prod­uct life cycle: From early test­ing, to broad field ap­pli­ca­tion, to ser­vice and prod­uct op­ti­miza­tion.

The lat­est Tech­nol­o­gy for your test bed

In the early de­vel­op­ment phase of a ma­chine, it is im­por­tant to learn about it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Only this way its minor bugs can be solved and ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tion strate­gies can be worked out. One key to op­ti­miza­tion is the record­ing and anal­y­sis of long-term mea­sure­ment data: The more high-qual­i­ty data is avail­able and the more ef­fi­cient­ly it can be an­a­lyzed to­geth­er, the more suc­cess­ful­ly you can op­ti­mize ma­chines and pro­cess­es.

IFTA sys­tems offer the lat­est avail­able tech­nol­o­gy:

  • Ro­bust and con­tin­u­ous 24/7 stor­age of all mea­sure­ment and op­er­at­ing data in a for­mat op­ti­mized for ef­fi­cient fur­ther pro­cess­ing - e.g. with ma­chine learn­ing al­go­rithms.
  • Real-time ca­pa­ble, high-per­for­mance hard­ware to eval­u­ate sig­nals close to the ma­chine - the so-called edge - e.g. to en­able model-based pro­tec­tion or to re­duce the amount of data trans­mit­ted.
  • In­tu­itive and fast user soft­ware that can vi­su­al­ize and an­a­lyze large amounts of data, both on­line and off­line.
  • Input mod­ules for all com­mon mea­sure­ment pa­ram­e­ters: From ana­log volt­age or cur­rent sig­nals to tem­per­a­ture sen­sors and strain gauges to tor­sion­al vi­bra­tions.
  • Flex­i­ble in­te­gra­tion of op­er­at­ing data, e.g. via OPC, Profibus/Profinet or as ana­log sig­nals.  
  • Numer­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties for con­troller com­mu­ni­ca­tion, e.g. with ana­log sig­nals, re­lays or Profibus/Profinet.

FROM the test bed into the field

While the goal at the test bench is to col­lect as much data as pos­si­ble, the aim in the field is to min­i­mize in­stru­men­ta­tion and data pro­cess­ing. This is the only way to es­tab­lish an eco­nom­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful fleet. The com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and mod­u­lar­i­ty of our hard­ware and soft­ware prod­ucts en­ables ex­act­ly this: Trans­fer the knowl­edge gained on the test bench di­rect­ly into the field and in­vest only in com­po­nents that re­al­ly con­trib­ute to a mea­sur­able ben­e­fit.

If un­fore­seen prob­lems should occur and e.g. tem­po­rary data record­ing should be re­quired, IFTA sys­tems offer all op­tions: Sim­ply plug our ready-made SlotPC with DataHub into the sys­tem and all data will be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly record­ed im­me­di­ate­ly. This gives you ac­cess to data that can­not be mea­sured on the test bench - for ex­am­ple, be­cause many events occur ran­dom­ly, de­pend on local con­di­tions, or their con­se­quences are not ac­cept­able for the ma­chine.

High­est plant avail­abil­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy

Ro­bust­ness and qual­i­ty are the top pri­or­i­ties for all our prod­ucts, be­cause we know what mat­ters most to our cus­tomers: High­est plant avail­abil­i­ty and safe­ty. In sec­ond place comes the most mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, which makes it pos­si­ble to op­er­ate your plants at max­i­mum ef­fi­cien­cy.

Our pri­ma­ry goal is there­fore to en­sure that our prod­ucts run 24/7 for many years, main­te­nance-free and with­out fail­ures. Thus, for ex­am­ple, we rely on pas­sive­ly cooled hard­ware, since ex­pe­ri­ence has shown that fans can fail. Our sys­tems also restart after a power fail­ure and con­tin­ue their work au­to­mat­i­cal­ly - in­clud­ing data record­ing. The IFTA sys­tems' de­sign fol­low an onion-skin prin­ci­ple: users only in­ter­act with the out­er­most layer. Data record­ing oc­curs one layer below, and all real-time func­tions nec­es­sary for ma­chine pro­tec­tion run in the core. To­geth­er with a gran­u­lar ac­cess con­trol of the in­di­vid­u­al com­po­nents, this en­sures high­est IT se­cu­ri­ty and ro­bust­ness of the most im­por­tant sys­tem func­tions.

Com­bus­tion Mon­i­tor­ing and Pro­tec­tion


The Ar­gusOMDS has been de­vel­oped and proven over more than 20 years in the mon­i­tor­ing of com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics, such as those oc­cur­ring in gas tur­bine com­bus­tors. Numer­ous Siemens En­er­gy gas tur­bines, e.g. of type 4000F and 8000H, are equipped with the Ar­gusOMDS pro­tec­tion sys­tem and en­sure re­li­able power sup­ply on a daily basis.

The ad­van­tages of the Ar­gusOMDS sys­tem:

  • Real-time re­ac­tion to os­cil­la­tion events via out­put cards for pro­tec­tion func­tions
  • High­ly cus­tom­iz­a­ble long-term data record­ing over months in­clud­ing seam­less raw sig­nals and com­pact over­view files
  • Record­ing of op­er­a­tional data to un­der­stand under which con­di­tions vi­bra­tions occur
  • Cus­tomiz­able pre/post trig­gers for ad­di­tion­al event stor­age
Ar­gusOMDS
  • Meas­ure­­ment
  • Ana­lys­is
  • Mon­it­or­ing
  • Pro­tec­­tion
  • Mo­du­lar con­struc­tion for flex­i­bil­i­ty in the choice of Input mod­ules
  • In­te­grates Sig­nalMin­er and DataHub soft­ware to record, store and re­dis­tribute data
  • Real-time pro­tec­tion and con­trol func­tions via a choice of out­put mod­ules
  • In­te­grates IFTA TrendView­er data anal­y­sis soft­ware to vi­su­al­ize, ex­plore and an­a­lyze the record­ed data
  • Op­tion­al­ly with ther­moa­cous­tic early warn­ing sys­tem IFTA PreCur­sor

 

 

Learn more on Youtube: Anal­yse rotor dy­nam­ics with IFTA TrendView­er

 

Re­duc­tion to Ma­chine Pro­tec­tion

The IFTA SmartPro­tect sys­tem fo­cus­es on pure ma­chine pro­tec­tion, with­out the data record­ing and di­ag­nos­tics of the IFTA Ar­gusOMDS sys­tem. It is there­fore ideal for cost-ef­fec­tive plant pro­tec­tion where ex­ten­sive data anal­y­sis and long-term data record­ing are not re­quired.

As shown in the il­lus­tra­tion below, mul­ti­ple SmartPro­tect sys­tems can be con­nect­ed to a cen­tral work­sta­tion for data record­ing and anal­y­sis.This re­duces hard­ware re­quire­ments com­pared to using mul­ti­ple Ar­gusOMDS sys­tems and pools data streams from mul­ti­ple gas tur­bine units.  Either all sys­tems can be con­nect­ed at the same time in this way, or - e.g. via lap­top - one sys­tem can be con­nect­ed after the other. The lat­ter con­cept makes it pos­si­ble to use the data record­ing and anal­y­sis tem­po­rar­ily as need­ed, for ex­am­ple for prob­lem anal­y­sis or tun­ing. In any case, pro­tec­tion is con­tin­u­ous­ly ac­tive for each tur­bine unit.

SmartPro­tect
  • Mea­sure­ment
  • Anal­y­sis
  • Mon­i­tor­ing
  • Pro­tec­tion
  • Mo­du­lar setup for flex­i­bil­i­ty in the choice of input mod­ules
  • Real-time pro­tec­tion and con­trol func­tions via a choice of out­put mod­ules
  • Op­tion­al with ther­mo-acous­tic early warn­ing sys­tem IFTA PreCur­sor
  • Up­grade­able with anal­y­sis and record­ing func­tion for short- or long-term use

Vizual­iza­tion of Com­bus­tion Dy­nam­ics with IFTA TrendView­er

With the help of the IFTA sys­tem Ar­gusOMDS, it is pos­si­ble to record the ma­chine-dy­nam­ic op­er­at­ing be­hav­ior of gas tur­bines, steam tur­bines, gen­er­a­tors or even drive trains. The anal­y­sis soft­ware IFTA TrendView­er of­fers spe­cial­ized plots to dis­play com­plex re­la­tion­ships in a clear and flex­i­ble way.

Plot rep­re­sen­ta­tions for vi­su­al­iza­tion of dy­nam­ic sig­nals

Wave­form Trend Plot

Use the Trend plot to ana­­lyze value changes over time. The time is plot­t­ed on the x-axis and the val­ues are plot­t­ed on the y-axis.

Ana­­lyze wave­­forms to see how the am­p­l­i­tudes and wave­­forms change over time.

The ex­am­ple shows a dis­­­tance sen­sor sig­­nal from a ro­­tat­ing ma­­chine. On the x-axis the time is drawn, on the y-axis the mag­ni­tude of the sig­­nal is plot­t­ed.

The wa­ve­­­form of a shaft dis­­­­­pla­ce­­­ment si­g­­nal of a rotor kit shaft over time.

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Spec­tro­gram Plot

An­a­lyze fre­quen­cy phe­nom­e­na over time with a spec­tro­gram. Dis­play am­pli­tude changes for all fre­quen­cy lines at once.

In the ex­am­ple the ab­so­lute spec­trum of a pres­sure sen­sor in­stalled in an acous­ti­cal­ly ex­cit­ed burn­er is dis­played. You can see how the am­pli­tude of the first har­mon­ic at a fre­quen­cy of ≈175Hz and in­creas­es and de­creas­es over time.

On the x-axis the time is dis­played, on the y-axes the spec­trum unit, e.g. fre­quen­cy [Hz]. The color bar on the left de­fines the col­ors de­pict­ing the mag­ni­tude of the spec­trum val­ues.

Spec­tro­­­gram of a pres­­sure sen­sor in­­­stalled in an acous­t­ic­al­ly ex­­­cit­ed burn­er.

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Spec­trum Plot

Use the spec­trum plot to ana­­lyze spec­­tra for a se­lec­t­ed point in time. Read the am­p­l­i­tude for all fre­quen­cy lines at once and iden­ti­­fy rel­ev­ant fre­quen­­cies at cur­rent time curs­or po­s­i­­tion.

The fig­ure shows the ab­­so­­lute spec­trum of a pres­­sure sen­sor in­­stalled in an acous­tic­al­ly ex­cit­ed burn­er. The res­on­ance peak at 168 Hz is au­to­­mat­ic­al­ly marked with a label de­pic­t­ing the mag­ni­tude and fre­quen­cy.

The plot is often used in con­junc­­tion with an in­­ten­s­i­ty plot to dis­­­play the val­ues at the cur­rent curs­or point. On the x-axis, the fre­quen­cy is dis­­­played and on the y-axis the mag­ni­tude of the spec­trum.



The mag­n­i­tude spec­trum of a pres­­sure sen­sor in­­­stalled in an acous­t­ic­al­ly ex­­­cit­ed burn­er at the cur­rent time curs­or po­s­i­­­tion. The res­on­ance peak at 168 Hz is marked with a label de­pic­t­ing the am­pli­tude and fre­quen­cy.

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Plot rep­re­sen­ta­tions for vi­su­al­iza­tion of stat­ic vi­bra­tions

Trend Plot

Use the trend plot to an­a­lyze value changes over time. The time is plot­ted on the x-axis and the val­ues are plot­ted on the y-axis.

Visu­al­ize how a sig­nal changes over time in trend plots. Find de­pen­den­cies in your data by adding mul­ti­ple sig­nals to the plot.

Speed si­g­­nal and ma­x­i­­mal ex­­­cur­si­on of a rotor kit shaft over time.

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Boolean Trend Plot

Use the Trend plot to ana­­ly­ze value chan­ges over time. The time is plot­t­ed on the x-axis and the va­lues are plot­t­ed on the y-axis.

An­a­­ly­ze boo­lean/logic sig­­nals over time and iden­­ti­­fy points in time at which chan­ges take place. Sig­­nals are au­to­­mat­ic­al­ly stacked and grouped to one y-axis for bet­ter read­­ab­il­i­ty.

In the ex­­am­­ple run-up and run-down si­g­­nals of a ro­­ta­t­ing ma­chi­ne are dis­­­­­played. On the x-axis time is shown and on the y-axis the state (0 for false and 1 for true). As you can see first the ma­chi­ne is in run up state and after a short amount of time it is run down.

 

Trend Plot to display Boolean values over time
Lo­g­ic­al run up and run down sig­­nals of a rotor kit over time.

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In­ten­si­­ty Plot

Dis­­play a group of sig­­nals with the same unit in one in­­ten­s­i­ty plot. You get an over­view of the val­ues over time. Thus, you can quick­ly iden­ti­­fy sen­sor val­ues which de­vi­ate from the rest of the group and ana­­lyze how val­ues change over time. The plot gives a quick con­­densed over­view over a group of sig­­nals which is su­per­i­or in com­­par­is­on to a trend plot.

In the ex­am­ple, 24 tur­bine out­­let tem­per­at­ures are drawn on the y-axis over the x-axis (time). The tem­per­at­ure is drawn by color, where the color cor­res­ponds to a value dis­­­played on the "color bar" on the left side of the plot. 

"Spec­tro­­gram" of 24 tur­bine out­­­­let tem­per­­at­ures.

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List Plot

Dis­­play the val­ues of sig­­nals at the cur­rent time curs­or po­s­i­­tions. Thus, you can quick­ly com­­pare val­ues of dif­fer­­ent sig­­nals and dif­fer­­ent times.

In the ex­am­ple, the cur­rent val­ues of ma­­chine state var­i­ables are shown for time curs­or 1 and 2. Ad­di­­tion­al data is the time, the value dif­fer­­ence be­tween the two curs­ors and the sig­­nal unit. It is pos­si­ble to con­­fig­ure the num­ber of ta­bles, vis­i­ble col­umns and rows.

The val­ues of sev­er­­al ma­­chine state var­i­­ables at time curs­or 1 2 and di­f­fer­­­ence be­tween them.

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LED Plot

The LED Plot dis­­­plays states (bool­ean/lo­g­ic­al sig­­nals) at the cur­rent time curs­or po­s­i­­tion. See im­me­di­ate­ly if an error or alarm oc­curs and if your sys­tem is run­n­ing cor­rect­ly.

The ex­am­ple shows sev­er­al bin­ary sig­­nals (green/red for true and grey for false).  A color can be cho­sen for the ac­t­ive and in­­ac­t­ive state.



The state of sev­er­­al bool­ean/lo­g­ic­al sig­n­als (here: green/red for true and grey for false) at the cur­rent time curs­or po­s­i­­­tion.

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Array Plot

Dis­­­play a group of si­g­­nals with the same unit in one plot. You get an over­­view of the va­lues at the cur­rent time cur­­sor po­si­ti­on. Thus, you can quick­­­­ly iden­­ti­­fy sen­­sor va­lues which de­vi­a­te from the rest of the group.

In the ex­­am­­ple fi­gu­re you can see 24 tur­bi­ne out­­­­let tem­pe­ra­­tu­res. On the x-axis, the sen­­sor num­ber is dis­­­­­played and on the y-axis the tem­pe­ra­­ture.

Value of the 24 tur­bine out­let tem­per­a­tures at the cur­rent time cur­sor po­si­tion.

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Radar Plot

Use the Radar plot to gain a quick over­view over mul­ti­ple sig­­nals at once. You can eas­i­ly see if one sen­sor pro­vides dif­fer­­ent data than other sen­sors for a lar­ger num­ber of meas­ure­­ment sig­­nals.

In the ex­am­ple you can see 24 tur­bine out­­let tem­per­at­ures drawn equidis­tant­ly around the plot ori­­gin.

 

Value of the 24 tur­bine out­let tem­per­a­tures at the cur­rent time cur­sor po­si­tion.

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Ex­plore more plot vari­ants

High Tem­per­a­ture Sen­sors Ver­sus In­fin­i­ty Tubes

Ideal­ly, pres­sure os­cil­la­tions should be mea­sured at the point where they have the great­est in­flu­ence on the ma­chine be­hav­ior or con­di­tion. If the pres­sure os­cil­la­tions are caused by ther­moa­cous­tic com­bus­tion in­sta­bil­i­ties, this is di­rect­ly at the com­bus­tion cham­ber. Since con­ven­tion­al pres­sure sen­sors can­not with­stand the very high tem­per­a­tures pre­vail­ing there, there are es­sen­tial­ly two ap­proach­es:

  • Po­si­tion­ing the sen­sor at a suf­fi­cient­ly cool lo­ca­tion. The pres­sure os­cil­la­tions are "con­duct­ed" from the com­bus­tion cham­ber to the sen­sor po­si­tion with the aid of a tube or hose
  • Use of spe­cial high-tem­per­a­ture pres­sure sen­sors

In­fin­i­ty Tubes

The first op­tion makes it pos­si­ble to use con­ven­tion­al pres­sure sen­sors. The dis­ad­van­tage of this so­lu­tion is that the pres­sure is not mea­sured di­rect­ly in the com­bus­tion cham­ber, but in a tube at­tached to it. Each tube has a num­ber of nat­u­ral fre­quen­cies de­pend­ing on its length. The pres­sure am­pli­tude mea­sured in the tube thus de­pends on the re­spec­tive os­cil­la­tion fre­quen­cy as well as the po­si­tion­ing of the sen­sor. Only for small fre­quen­cy ranges the am­pli­tude mea­sured in the tube can be sim­ply com­pared to the ac­tu­al am­pli­tude pre­vail­ing in the com­bus­tion cham­ber. This prob­lem is often solved by mak­ing the tube very long in order to min­i­mize res­o­nance peaks for rel­e­vant fre­quen­cy ranges at the sen­sor po­si­tion - in this con­text, one there­fore often speaks of so-called "in­fin­i­ty tubes". These in­fin­i­ty tubes have the dis­ad­van­tage that they are quite bulky. On the other hand, they are sus­cep­ti­ble to dam­age. For ex­am­ple, de­for­ma­tion or con­densed water can cause un­want­ed cross-sec­tion­al nar­row­ing, which in turn leads to re­flec­tions and thus lim­it­ed func­tion­al­i­ty.

High Tem­per­a­ture Sen­sors

The much more ro­bust so­lu­tion are high-tem­per­a­ture sen­sors, which can be mount­ed di­rect­ly at the com­bus­tion cham­ber. Due to the harsh en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions pre­vail­ing there, the charge am­pli­fiers nor­mal­ly in­te­grat­ed in the sen­sor have to be re­lo­cat­ed. These ex­ter­nal charge am­pli­fiers are con­nect­ed to the sen­sors using tem­per­a­ture-re­sis­tant ca­bles, re­sult­ing in a more com­plex mea­sure­ment setup. How­ev­er, a mea­sure­ment chain of this type al­lows acous­tic pres­sure fluc­tu­a­tions to be mea­sured di­rect­ly in or at the com­bus­tion cham­ber over a very wide fre­quen­cy range with vir­tu­al­ly no fal­si­fi­ca­tion.

Con­clu­sion

Two so­lu­tions exist for mea­sur­ing pres­sure os­cil­la­tions in com­bus­tion cham­bers: (1) The use of high-tem­per­a­ture mea­sure­ment chains and (2) the use of so-called in­fin­i­ty tubes. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the first so­lu­tion is su­pe­ri­or in every re­spect. Only the lower price and a larg­er range of sen­sors on the mar­ket speak for the use of In­fin­i­ty Tubes.

 

Fur­ther chal­lenges when mon­i­tor­ing com­bus­tion cham­bers

Ad­van­tages of the IFTA So­lu­tion in Case of Com­bus­tion Dy­nam­ics

Flex­i­bil­i­ty & Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty

Mo­du­lar hard­ware of­fers sim­ple flex­i­ble de­sign and com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with com­mon sen­sor prin­ci­ples. Sen­sors are suit­able for high tem­per­a­ture en­vi­ron­ments. A wide se­lec­tion of input mod­ules and a lean mea­sure­ment chain for low-noise sig­nal trans­mis­sion com­plete the se­lec­tion.

 

Reli­able pro­tec­tion

The mon­i­tor­ing and pro­tec­tion sys­tem IFTA Ar­­­gusOMDS pro­vides long-term record­ing, trig­gered data stor­age with pre- and post-trig­ger, and pro­tec­tive shut­downs for ma­chine and plant safe­ty.

 

Real-time data anal­y­sis

The IFTA DSP with its Sig­nalMin­er firmware pro­vides real-time mea­sure­ment and anal­y­sis and com­par­i­son of ma­chine and op­er­at­ing data. With the eval­u­a­tion soft­ware IFTA TrendView­er, mea­sure­ment data is an­a­lyzed on­line and, if nec­es­sary, set­tings for ef­fi­cient and re­li­able ma­chine uti­liza­tion can be op­ti­mized di­rect­ly.

Plant avail­abil­i­ty &  safe­ty

The mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem IFTA Ar­gusOMDS mon­i­tors plants au­tonomous­ly and re­li­ably 24/7, even over years. Data is re­li­ably record­ed and can be an­a­lyzed if re­quired.  

Rec­om­mend­ed Prod­ucts

Selec­tion of sen­sors

The right se­lec­tion of high tem­per­a­ture sen­sors.

IFTA PreCur­sor

Early warn­ing sys­tem for
com­bus­tion dy­nam­ics.

Ar­gusOMDS

Pro­tec­tion sys­tem with di­ag­nos­tics and mon­i­tor­ing func­tion­al­i­ty.

SmartPro­tect

Pure pro­tec­tion sys­tem with­out data record­ing.

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