VIBRATION MONITORING PHASE MEASUREMENT AND THE TACHO SIGNAL
By Dr Colin Mercer, Technical Director, Prosig
Any vibration signal may be analyzed into amplitude and phase as a function of frequency. The phase represents fifty percent of the information so it is most important to measure phase for vibration monitoring. Most vibrations on a rotating machine are related to the rotational speed so it is clearly important to have a measure of the speed, either directly or as a once per revolution tacho pulse. A question some time arises as to whether a once per revolution tacho reference signal is needed to measure phase. Is it possible to get phase if we only have a speed signal? This note gives some insight into those questions. Actually the question that should be asked is - “Can we measure a meaningful phase, for use in vibration monitoring, if we only have a speed signal as well as the vibration signals?” read »»»
