Zusman G.

Although vibration is a good tool for condition monitoring the health of rotating machinery, there are certain reciprocating machine health issues that will not affect the overall machine vibration level until damage has progressed over the critical level. This paper includes the description of the shock monitoring technology which is more sensitive to early-stage development of reciprocating compressors harmful mechanical conditions. Such conditions may include loose rod nuts, loose bolts, worn pins, broken parts, liquid in the process, rubbing and some others. The monitoring technology based on detecting mechanical shock events in or near the machinery cylinder assembly. The amplitude of the each shock event is measured during the preset time window and is compared to a two preset thresholds. If the amplitude of the shock event not surpasses the low threshold during the time window then the monitoring out presents the normalized maximum amplitude of the shock event in previous time window. If the amplitude of the shock event surpasses one or both thresholds then the monitoring out presents the counted number of above events with the specific wait ratio. Such technology has proven very reliable in practice for identifying conditions such as looseness, crack and leakage. This paper also describes several case stories as well as a structure of monitoring sensor which realized the technology.