Infrared Thermography Inspection on Potential Failures of Rotating Equipment

Maintenance and inspection strategy in industries is very important to ensure the process run smoothly with the low maintenance cost and time consuming. In almost all industry, typically, the reliability of the critical motors is usually taken care by vibration monitoring and trending program. Although vibration is part of important element of rotating equipment, the heat transfer also can be used in order to determine the condition of the motor. This is done by applying the non-destructive testing (NDT) which is Infrared Thermography (IRT). Through the technology, the failure can be detect at the early stages. This avoids machine failure and costly unplanned shutdown. Therefore the aim of the project is to validate the use of IRT in detecting the failure of the motor through control IRT testing. The results from the experiment are very significant in order to establish the application of IRT in inspection strategy. In this experimental study, a laboratory cell was designed and the two common faults which are overload and misalignment were created to stimulate the condition of motor in plant. Factor such as defect’s limitation, object distance and emissivity are the parameters that affect the accuracy of the results. Thus, infrared image in parallel with numerical analysis in term of different temperature distribution as time the increased will used to detect the failure during the running process of the motor in plant