Gyrometric Systems Ltd develops and manufactures monitoring equipment for rotating shafts. The company is active in marine drives where many installations have been operating reliably for many years. More recently Gyrometric has moved into monitoring wind turbines.
Such monitoring can warn, for example, of wear in a bearing, or excessive stress on drive components. Data from the monitoring system makes it possible for the owner of expensive capital equipment to protect the productivity of their assets by controlling operating conditions or by scheduling maintenance to avoid damage and breakdowns and the associated down time.
Monitoring systems, by their nature must operate reliably over long periods themselves without maintenance or recalibration. Gyrometric provides a new, higher level of monitoring information with its very precise measurements of critical shaft movement parameters.
The company has developed a proprietary digital method of measuring radial movement of shafts to high accuracy, which is self-calibrating and therefore ideal for high reliability monitoring applications.
Gyrometric has recently filed a patent application for a new method of measuring the axial movement of rotating shafts which matches the reliability achieved by its digital radial measurement method.
The new method measures the axial movement by an analogue sensor, but re-calibrates itself every revolution of the shaft. The corrected measurements are output in digital form but are as accurate and reliable over time as the company’s fully digital radial system.
The market for wind turbines is growing rapidly and turbines are getting larger, to increase efficiency. Today, the largest turbines have rotor diameters of up to 180 metres and these exert huge axial loads on the bearings and the gearbox. Accurately monitoring axial movement is important when monitoring bearing and gearbox wear.
David Orton – Gyrometric CEO, and also the inventor of this device said “Our new axial system enables us to offer the accuracy and reliability over time, which we have become known for in the monitoring and protection of high value equipment, in even more applications.”
Patent Application Number 1804069.1
