| Summary: | The advent of tip-timing systems makes it possible to assess turbomachinery blade vibration using non-contact systems. Currently, the most widely used systems in industry are optical systems. However, these systems are still only used on development engines, largely because of contamination problems from dust, dirt, oil, water etc. Further development of these systems for in-service use is problematic because of the difficulty of eliminating contamination of the optics. Hence, alternatives need to be developed that are immune to contamination but have equivalent resolution and bandwidth as the optical system. Experimental measurements have been carried out using alternative sensors. An eddy current sensor has been developed in a series of laboratory and engine tests to measure rotor blade arrival times. Comparisons are made with an industry standard optical blade tip timing system. The results show that it is possible to acquire high quality blade tip timing data for use in engine condition monitoring using an eddy current sensor. This sensor allows measurements to be taken that do not suffer from flow contamination and allow deployment for hotter flow environments. Copyright © 2008 QinetiQ Ltd.
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