Graphic displays for operators of rotating machinery

The current need to install cost-effective maintenance regimes on rotating plants has lead to an increased level of instrumentation to monitor the plants condition. Modern instrumentation systems have the capacity to acquire prodigious amounts of data from a wide variety of sensor types. The data is processed in the system and stored in a database. It is now the task of the data retrieval system, together with the graphics display unit, to recover and present this data to the plant operator in a usable form. Data presentation must be appropriate to the task to be accomplished and fit the skill level of the personnel involved. The establishment of condition monitoring, leading to predictive maintenance, as a cost effective method of reducing maintenance downtimes while increasing availability has brought about a considerable increase in the number of sensors fitted to rotating machinery