USING UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS FOR CONDITION MONITORING OF ROTATING EQUIPMENT AND STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING

摘要

The preferred approach for assessing equipment condition in an operating plant is to analyze condition-monitoring data from sensors rather than to interpret a physical inspection report. Data are collected continually over hard-wired networks for critical components. Less critical data are collected periodically using portable data loggers. As well, periodic physical inspections are still necessary for some equipment and structures. Manual inspections are time-consuming, access may be difficult, and inspection reporting is prone to human error. For these reasons, partial automation of periodic data collection should be considered. A system architecture is presented for a general-purpose unmanned aerial system capable of deploying a set of sensors for condition monitoring, including criteria for sensor selection, payload integration, data collection, processing, archiving, and reporting. Design options are presented for a robotic fixed-aircraft conducting an idealized pipeline leak detection survey, a rotorcraft for autonomous placement of a magnetically mounted accelerometer for rotating equipment condition monitoring, and a rotorcraft deploying an ultrasonic sensor for structural monitoring.