Condition monitoring and predictive maintenance in mining industry using vibration analysis for diagnosis of gear boxes

Machine diagnosis through vibration analysis is a powerful instrument for condition monitoring. Nevertheless, the reliable early fault detection of large and complex drive systems which are used e.g. in mining industry remains problematic. On the one hand the large size of such transmission parts requires multiple sensors and on the other hand common vibration diagnosis techniques do not work at extremely low rotating speed. This paper describes the monitoring and diagnosis of gearboxes in mining industry using a patented sensor technology called dtect which is able to cope with these problems. Copyright (C) 1998 IFAC.