Design of a Digital Acquisition and Signal Processing Unit for vibration analysis of rotating machinery

This was a european project within the BRITE-EURAM framework with the final goal of monitoring large turbo-generator sets in hydroelectric plants. The project leader was Iberdrola (SP) and, besides the GTAS group, the rest of partners were ANSALDO (IT), IRCOM (FR), LETI (FR) and the groups of mechanical engineering and photonics of the University of Cantabria. The work of our group was focused on the development of a flexible and powerful acquisition and signal processing unit that we called DASPU (Digital Acquisition Signal Processing Unit). The DASPU was based on the TMS320C30 Digital Signal Processor from Texas Instruments and it was able to acquire up to 16 channels from displacement and vibration sensors located in the turbine of the hydroelectric group. The DASPU also carried out signal processing tasks such as simultaneous sampling among the channels, asynchornous to synchronous conversion , FFT-based spectral analysis, frequency, amplitude and phase estimation of the main harmonics, etc. The temporal and frequency data we transferred to a remote host through a RS-422 network. A software program was also developed to perform the tasks of system configuration, data storage and visualization and predictive maintenance analysis (based on neural networks). The final system was successfully installed in two spanish hydroelectric plants (Villarino y Soutelo).