Spin doctor

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UK engineers pioneer the use of eddy current probe technology to monitor the health of individual turbine blades as they turn. Siobhan Wagner reports

Two UK companies have developed a turbine condition monitoring system that they claim can pinpoint a damaged blade — even when it is spinning.

The T3, from condition monitoring specialist

and defence group Qinetiq, combines an eddy current probe with an advanced driver to monitor the time it takes the tips of the blades to spin round in a turbine and the vibration frequency of each individual blade.

It could have applications for both airborne and ground-based industrial turbine systems.

'If you damage a blade or if it becomes misaligned, it will change its time of arrival and its vibration frequency,' said Donald Lyon, managing director of Monitran. 'The eddy current probe is able to measure this feedback and determine the health of a blade.'

The probe begins to work when a current is sent around an electro-magnetic coil, which produces a magnetic field. If a conducting material, such as a turbine blade, passes through this field a current will start flowing. 'That is the eddy current,' said Lyon.

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