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Diagnosis of continuous rotorstator rubbing in large scale turbine units using acoustic emissions
L.D. Hall, D. Mba
*
School of Mechanical Engineering, Craneld University, Building 52, Bedfordshire, Craneld MK43 0AL, UK Received 27 February 2003; accepted 16 September 2003

Abstract Continuous rubbing between the shaft and surrounding seals or end-glands of electricity generating turbine units can escalate into very severe vibration and costly rotor damage. Therefore such rotorstator contacts require early diagnosis so as to minimize the nancial consequences of any unplanned shutdowns. Acoustic emissions (AEs) or stress wave monitoring at the bearings has been identied as a sensitive non-destructive monitoring technique for such rub conditions [Electr. Eng. Jpn. 110(2) (1990); IEEE Proc. 6 (2000) 79; Hall and Mba, 14th International Congress on Condition Monitoring and Diagnostic Engineering Management (COMADEM2001), Manchester, UK, 2001, p. 21]. However, experimental results from real turbines have been scarce. This paper presents a diagnosis of continuous rotorstator rubbing in an operational 500 MW turbine unit via high frequency AE measurement within a 100 KHz1 MHz ultrasonic band. As detailed by Sato [Electr. Eng. Jpn. 110(2) (1990)] and reported in this paper the onset of a continuous rub contact at a seal/gland was revealed by a sinusoidal modulation within the raw rf AE response. By synchronous measurement at adjacent bearings, an estimation of the location of the rub was calculated using the phase delay between the adjacent AE modulations. Importantly, the AE diagnosis was closely corroborated by post-inspection of the turbine rotor. 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Acoustic emission; Condition monitoring; Rubbing; Turbines

1. Introduction To maximise eciency, the seals and end-glands along the length of modern turbine units are in very close radial proximity to the rotating shaft. This is illustrated for a low-pressure section of a 500 MW unit in Fig. 1. It is therefore unsurprising that contacts or rubs can readily occur between the high-inertia 50 Hz shaft and the surrounding components. Factors that have been attributed to the onset of rubbing in rotating plant [1] include thermal eects, foundation movement, component movement, rotor unbalance or misalignment. Regardless of the exact relationship between cause and eect, the existence of rubbing is of great concern to the rotor dynamist engineer as it can develop into signicant mechanical vibration leading to costly rotor damage. Rotorstator rubbing may be broadly classied as either partial or continuous. The partial type describes brief
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44-1234-754681; fax: +44-1234751566. E-mail address: d.mba@craneld.ac.uk (D. Mba). 0041-624X/$ - see front matter 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ultras.2003.09.002
*

intermittent contacts between the rotor and stator. Often these are at apparently random locations along the turbine and may be innocuous where contacts are light and the seals are backed by high torsion springs. However, partial rubs can be more detrimental to the health of the turbine when they occur at a single shaft location so as to make contact with the stator on every revolution of the shaft. Such once per-revolution partial rub conditions can lead to localized regions of increased temperature on the shaft that may cause it to bend [4]. Alternatively, continuous rotorstator rubbing describes more sustained rotorstator interaction over many shaft rotations and are always of concern to the rotor dynamics engineer. Such full annular conditions have a profound eect upon rotor dynamics. Diagnosis of this important type of rub condition via acoustic emissions (AEs) has been proposed [13] and is the topic of this paper. Presently, the only non-destructive technique widely available for identifying shaft-seal rubbing in large scale turbines is vibration monitoring of the bearing pedestals. This involves analysis of vibration data from

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measured AE response. In addition, previous work [1] has suggested that a more detailed estimation of the exact location of the rub along the rotor can be obtained by simultaneous AE measurement at each of the supporting bearings, as indicated in Fig. 1. This paper presents validation of this AE technique for a real operational 500 MW steam unit. Signicantly, very specic AE diagnosis of a rub close to one of the bearings was vindicated by post-inspection of the rotor.

2. AE monitoring of rotating machinery

Fig. 1. Cross-section of a LP stage from a 500 MW unit.

accelerometers operating within a 0400 Hz band permanently attached to the bearing housing. However, this approach has not proved to be eective in detecting the very earliest stages of rotorstator rubbing. Moreover, its success in identifying more severe rubbing is highly dependent upon expert interpretation from the rotor dynamist as increased vibration has a number of potential causes and can only be attributed to rubbing in the most well developed cases. Therefore a more sensitive monitoring technique that could provide a direct and unambiguous indication of the onset of rotorstator rubbing conditions is extremely valuable. Frictional rubbing between metallic components cause a release of transient broadband stress wave energy (SWE) referred to as AEs. It is considered that this SWE within a 100 KHz1 MHz band can propagate along the shaft and across the various component interfaces within the bearing, so as to be registered by an AE sensor attached to the bearing housing. Clearly acoustic attenuation at such high frequency and extraneous background noise registered by the AE sensor in large scale rotating machinery has contributed to a low signal-to-noise ratio at the sensor and has necessitated adequate signal processing to increase the probability of rub detection. However, it is argued that the AE wave modes across the shaft propagate successfully without signicant attenuation. Rayleigh surface waves are thought to be predominant for rub induced AE waves across the shaft. These are elliptical waves slower than both longitudinal and transverse modes and they penetrate no more than a couple of wavelengths. To examine the AE response at the bearings during continuous rubbing a low acoustic noise test-rig capable of emulating continuous shaft-seal rubbing was employed for preliminary tests. In addition to validating that AE waves from a continuous rub can be detected at the bearings, these tests revealed that continuous rubbing has a signicant eect upon the rotor dynamics that is manifested by a characteristic modulation in the

Although AE, introduced by Kaiser in 1950 [5], has traditionally been used in monitoring defects in static or loaded structures or materials, it has found increasing application in non-destructive condition monitoring of rotating machinery of many dierent sizes, loads and operational speeds. However for large scale rotating machinery, AE is better established in slow-speed plant incorporating rolling-element bearings [6]. Reasons for this include the obvious unsuitability of conventional vibration analysis at very low rotation speeds, the low levels of background noise often found in such plant, and the possibility of direct measurement upon the shaft [6]. In contrast, the application of AE to intermediate or fast rotating machinery has been less comprehensively researched. This might well be attributed in part to the proven success of conventional vibration analysis at high rotational frequencies, potentially higher levels of background noise and the constraints of more remote AE measurement at the bearing housing. An introduction to recommended practices for AE in industrial rotating machinery is provided by Holroyd [7], who highlighted some of the important general concepts. First, it was noted that background noise within machinery at ultrasonic frequencies is inherently lower than within the lower audio frequency range and AE defect signals will exhibit less spectral overlap with noise. Secondly, the appearance of distinct AE transients is often the rst indication of mechanical distress and in rotating machinery the onset of a periodic pattern or trend within the AE response can infer the onset of incipient mechanical defect. Thirdly, Holroyd conceded the poor repeatabilityof AE measurements across different machines was not conducive to a robust knowledge base and this constitutes the major disadvantage of the AE approach to industrial monitoring particularly as interpretation of AE signals is extremely systemspecic. The literature reects that AE monitoring in fast large scale rotating machinery often requires sophisticated signal processing and signal interpretation. For AE monitoring of rub conditions, the combination of signal attenuation, especially across the bearing interfaces, and the high levels of background AE noise result in a low SNR for rub detection. This constitutes

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the limiting factor for AE monitoring of large machinery and is a major factor contributing to the dearth of publications on this topic. In fact, the only published articles directly addressing the use of AE for shaft-seal rub detection in large scale 50 Hz turbine generators are the papers by Sato [1] and Board [2], published in 1990 and 2000 respectively. Sato proposed AE analysis as a complementary technique to conventional vibration analysis with accelerometers, with particular use in unambiguous detection of the early stages of rub conditions by direct measurement. Moreover, unlike vibration monitoring, he addressed AE based estimation of the location of the fault through synchronous AE measurement at adjacent bearings. Sato induced a rub condition on a 350 MW steam turbine rig rotating at normal operational frequency. AE sensors were attached to adjacent journal bearings whilst continuous rubbing was introduced at various rotor locations between the bearings with an aluminium sample, whilst the plant rotated at 50 Hz. Although the onset of rubbing induced an increase in the AE amplitude levels at each sensor, Sato commented that using changes in AE energy as the indicator of rubbing is not ideal, and a more robust indication of rubbing is provided by an envelope detection technique [1]. This involved applying a form of enveloping in which the alternating AE voltage was transformed into the energy domain and smoothed, although details are not given, before being applied to a narrowband lter, matched to the rotation frequency of the turbine. This revealed that the high-frequency raw AE response modulates the sinusoidal oscillation of the rotating shaft, in the same way as a carrier wave is used in AM radio. Sato concluded that detection of this AE modulation is an eective signal processing technique for detecting rubbing. Similarly, demodulation of AE signals was used by Bagnoli [8] for incipient faults in rolling-element bearings. Bagnoli compares AE favourably to accelerometer detection of bearing damage. Hawman [9] showed that information such as the number of defects and their location can be gained from AE demodulation. Sato also found that the rub source location could be deter-

mined using the time or phase dierence between the AE modulated signals from two sensor channels on adjacent bearings. More recently, Board [2] presented a system for realtime analysis of friction and mechanical shock in machinery through SWE measurement, in which as damage progresses, the energy content of friction and shock events increases. Success in detection of rubbing was reported for an industrial turbine at an electric power utility. Data was collected from a gas turbine unit over a period of 5 months, prior to the removal from service for a scheduled overhaul. During this period, an AE sensor located on the low-pressure turbine (LPT) showed a signicant increase in friction levels. The erratic nature of the AE readings and the absence of any clear indication of damage to gears or bearings, led to the conclusion that rubbing was at fault. A disassembly inspection conducted during overhaul revealed the cause to be wear to the faces of the labyrinth seals in the LPT area. Although this constitutes a rub diagnosis from an operational turbine, there is inadequate description of the AE signatures recorded, with simply a mention of the erratic nature of the SWE readings, and the consequent rotor damage.

3. The AE system The AE signal measurement system employed for this study is shown in Fig. 2. This incorporates wideband piezoelectric Physical Acoustic Corp WD sensors differentially connected to a 20/40/60 dB gain pre amplier for measurement within the 100 kHz1 MHz band. The separate pre amp incorporated a plug-in analogue highpass lter (100 KHz1.2 MHz) to suppress low frequency acoustic noise components and exhibited better temperature performance than could be achieved using an integral preamplier. The signal output from the preamplier was connected directly to a commercial acquisition card that occupies one of the ISA slots within a Pentium host PC. This AE DSP card also from Physical Acoustic Corp provided up to an 8 MHz

Pentium PC ISI ISA bus Wide band Transducer

20/40/60dB Pre-Amp

Anti-Alias Filter

16-bit ADC

Digital Signal Processor TMS320C40

Wide band Transducer

20/40/60dB Pre-Amp

Anti-Alias Filter

16-bit ADC

Post-Signal and Data Processing

Monitor

Memory

Fig. 2. The AE system schematic.

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sampling rate and incorporates 16-bit precision ADCs giving a dynamic range of more than 85 dB. Moreover, an extended local memory allowed the sequential recording of signals containing up to 256,000 samples. This corresponded to the continuous measurement over more than 0.06 s at a sampling rate of 4 MHz. Prior to the ADC, the card employs anti-aliasing lters that can be controlled (i.e. the bandpass altered) directly in software. This was set between 100 KHz and 1200 KHz.

4. Preliminary laboratory experiment Prior to AE measurements upon the real turbine, the AE system was applied to the journal bearings of a laboratory test rig illustrated in Fig. 3. Although this test rig is much smaller than the rotors of a real turbine and could only rotate at a maximum speed of 2500 rev/min, it served as a very low acoustic noise environment in which the nature of AE response from continuous rubbing could be studied. Continuous shaft-seal rub conditions were simulated between the journal bearings using the continuous rub mechanism shown in Figs. 4(a) and (b). This allowed a steel seal xture to rest against the rotating shaft with a force ranging from 46 to 141 N. The steel seal xture, shown in Fig. 5, was machined to replicate the shape of inter-stage seals within real turbine units. Without this rub simulator engaged, there was negligible AE activity recorded at either of the test rig journal bearings, even with the preamplier set to 60 dB. However, on application of the continuous rubbing seal xture, there was an immediate increase in AE energy at both sensors. At rst, the AE waveforms produced at both bearings was relatively stationary without any obvious pattern or trend. Moreover, it was found that on average, an increase in continuous rub load caused a proportional increase in both RMS and peak signal

Fig. 4. (a) The rub simulator mechanism. (b) Photograph of rub simulator.

Fig. 3. Schematic of test rig.

voltage. However, it quickly became clear that within approximately one minute of engaging the continuous rub simulator, the AE response began to reveal a very strong modulation eect. Fig. 6 depicts an AE signature measured at bearing-1 after the continuous rub simulator had been engaged for 60 s and the rotor speed was approximately 2400 rev/ min. It is clear that the envelope of this rf AE signal exhibits a modulation that can be considered pseudosinusoidal in shape. After repeating this continuous rub experiment using dierent seal xture shapes and materials and at dierent loads, it was concluded that this AE modulation was characteristic of the continuous rub condition. Moreover, inspection of rotor vibration during continuous rubbing, measured by x and y displacement eddy probes positioned along the shaft indi-

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rubbing at maximum rotor speed eventually caused very unstable rotor conditions in which the rotor would oscillate in and out of contact with the seal and this was registered by the AE sensors as a more impact like signal.

5. AE diagnosis of operational turbine unit Further to the laboratory experiment, a number of operational turbine units were regularly monitored using the AE system over a period of 12 months. One of these AE tests was conducted on a 500 MW unit operating at full load. A schematic of this turbine comprising of one high-pressure (HP), one intermediate pressure (IP) and three low-pressure (LP) coupled rotor stages is shown in Fig. 7. In addition, the supporting journal bearings are labelled from bearing-1 at the HP end to bearing-10 at the alternator end. During this visit, it was only possible to take AE measurements from the journal bearings supporting the three LP rotors, i.e. Bearings 5 10. At each LP bearing, the wideband AE sensors were attached directly onto the casing and next to the vibration accelerometer using magnetic clamps as shown in Fig. 8. Furthermore, the top coat of paint was removed and an acoustic couplant applied. As illustrated, the bearing housing was often very dirty and required careful preparation at the contact surface. Also, it is emphasised that the acoustic gel is essential as signal detectability can be improved over a dry contact by as much as 20 dB. In addition to measurement of

Fig. 5. Seal dimensions.

Fig. 6. AE response at bearing-1 after 60 s of during 141 N continuous rubbing.

cated that continuous rubbing had a very profound effect upon the rotor stability and the levels of parasitic vibration. It is strongly argued that the AE modulation observed from continuous rotorstator rubbing can be attributed to subtle uctuations in the rub force applied in conjunction with the orbit of the rotating shaft. Hence, the amplitude modulation provides very important direct information concerning the real-time rotor stator interaction forces. Moreover, this insight into the continuous rub state was more easily interpreted than that which could be achieved from rotor vibration data. It was also noted that prolonged and heavy continuous

Fig. 8. AE sensor positioning on bearings of 500 MW turbine.

10

HP

IP

LP1

LP2

LP3

Fig. 7. Schematic of the 500 MW unit.

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individual bearings, synchronous readings of bearings on either side of each stage were taken using both channels of the AE system. Clearly, the levels of background AE noise present at the bearings of the operational 50 Hz turbines are signicant. Over the period of this study, the high frequency AE noise activity from healthy turbines was generally found to be stationary and Gaussian in nature, although its frequency content was highly coloured by the detailed frequency response of the specic measuring sensor. Moreover, it was evident that signicant variability in the absolute amplitude levels existed over dierent turbines and across dierent bearings. This reduced the appeal of using absolute energy indicators for the AE response (e.g. RMS voltage) as a direct indicator of mechanical distress for such a non-destructive approach. It was also very apparent that the considerable levels of low frequency vibration characteristic of large scale operational turbines, although rigorously ltered both before and after digitisation, caused some harmonic inuence within the measurement band of interest. However, the background AE noise was primarily made up from a combination of conventional AE noise events from a number of individual sources including: turbulent motion of expanding steam or gas through the turbine mechanism; motion of the lubricating oil or debris between journal and bearing bush; thermal agitation within the structure and local temperature expansions; acoustic events from mechanical joint vibrations on the bearing housing; randomly occurring and spontaneous emission events from cracks or dislocations within or on the surface of the rotating shaft under load. Examples of the raw AE response measured at two dierent LP bearings are shown in Fig. 9. These were taken from (a) bearing-5 positioned nearest the IP stage and (b) bearing-10 positioned closest to the alternator.

The AE data measured from bearing-5 was modest in amplitude level yet was relatively spikey. However, this data, as with the LP2 bearings, revealed no obvious modulation that could be related to continuous shaftseal rubbing. In contrast, the data from the bearing-10 was signicantly higher in amplitude than the AE response from any of the other bearings. Moreover, it became apparent that a 50 Hz or 0.02 period amplitude modulation was present within the rf AE response. Although this may just be made out by inspection within the time domain, it becomes very much more evident after implementing appropriate signal processing algorithms in post-processing. First, the AE response from each bearing was high pass ltered with a linear phase response FIR lter with a cut-o at 100 kHz. Then, an estimation of the energy envelope of the peak-to-trough AE modulation was calculated by plotting the RMS voltage taken across contiguous blocks (i.e. 1024 samples) of the AE data. Although the measure involves the common method of RMS to represent the energy envelope, alternative enveloping techniques, such as a square law detector or the Hilbert transform, revealed similar results. Finally, a low order SavitskyGolay smoothing lter was applied across the RMS data. Fig. 10 compares the resulting waveforms from bearing-5 and that from bearing-10. Although no modulation was apparent at bearing-5, the AE data from bearing-10 nearest the alternator revealed a clear 50 Hz modulation. As with the test rig data, it is argued that this pseudo-sinusoidal AE modulation can be attributed to uctuations in the acting rub force applied in conjunction with the whirl orbit of the rotating shaft. In addition to the clear 50 Hz modulation at bearing10, the lower AE activity at bearing-9 also showed a sinusoidal modulation, albeit with much smaller amplitude. However, such a sinusoidal modulation was not observed at bearing-8. From this, it was thought that a continuous rub was present somewhere between bearing-10 and bearing-9 and that AE evidence inferred that the rub source was much closer to bearing-10. As mentioned in Section 1 and in the previous study of AE

Fig. 9. AE response measured at two LP bearings. (a) Bearing-5 and (b) bearing-10.

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Fig. 10. Smoothed RMS energy response. (a) Bearing-5 and (b) bearing-10.

monitoring of continuous rubbing in turbines [1], the AE monitoring technique lends itself to more precise rub location estimation through simultaneous measurements at adjacent bearings. In theory, it is considered that the 1-dimensional distance along the shaft from the bearing on which rubbing is registered can be calculated by estimating the time delay between the AE signal modulation present at adjacent bearing sensors. Considering a continuous rub at the seal labelled in Fig. 1, this simple relationship between this distance between rub and bearing d and the time lag Dt between signal modulations from the adjacent bearings can be derived as in Eq. (1). cDt l 1 2 where d is the distance of the rub from the bearing (m), c is the estimated velocity of sound within the medium (m/ s), Dt is the time delay between correlated AE features from the adjacent bearings (s), l is the bearing-to-bearing span (m). Fig. 11 shows the smoothed RMS waveforms from simultaneous AE measurement of both bearing-10 and bearing-9. This conrms that there was a 50 Hz modulation present at bearing-9 and that this was seen to lag the larger modulation present at bearing-10 by a time delay Dt. Hence, it is consistent with a continuous rub event closer to bearing-10. Many such synchronous waveforms were calculated for these bearings. Various techniques could be employed to evaluate this time delay. For an automatic calculation, the time between successive peaks from cross-correlating one bearing response over the other was used. Using this method, an averaged time delay between bearing-9 and bearing-10 was found to be 0.002 s. Moreover, it was considered that a fair estimation of the velocity of the stress wave across the rotor was 3000 m/s although the velocity of sound across the rotor constitutes the largest unknown variable and is highly dependent upon the exact metallic composition of the rotor. Consequently, taking the approximate bearing-to-bearing rotor length (l) to be 6 m, d

Smoothed RMS fluctuation for synchronuous WD mesurement on bearing-9 and 10

0.7 Bearing-10

Smoothed RMS /no units

0.6

0.5

0.4 Time delay 0.3 Bearing-9 0.2

0.1 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06

time/secs

Fig. 11. The smoothed RMS response measured simultaneously at adjacent bearings.

it was deduced that the location of the continuous rub was extremely close to bearing-10 and it was therefore inferred that the rub existed at the bearing-10 end-gland. This AE diagnosis was then reported to the station manager. In light of the possible error in the velocity of sound used, it was stated that a continuous rub event was occurring within 1 m of bearing-10. At this time, it was suggested that the AE modulation registered by the AE sensors may be associated with some kind of electromagnetic interference from the alternator situated next to bearing-10. However, this postulate was rejected for three reasons. Primarily, the time delay observed is more in line with acoustic velocities of sound rather that the much higher constant velocity of EM radiation. Secondly, the modulation was not present at the alternator bearings of most other operational turbine units monitored during this study. Thirdly, during an inspection of a unit suspected of experiencing continuous rubbing, a similar modulation was observed at the alternator bearing without the alternator engaged.

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Fig. 12. Inspecting the LP Rotors from the 500 MW unit investigated.

twice that for the adjacent undamaged glands at all positions around the rotor circumference. In addition to this evenly distributed increase in surface area, it was apparent that a pronounced lip had been formed on each side of the widened end-gland tips. Again, this was present around the entire circumference of the rotor. Whilst the AE diagnosis presented here corroborated the laboratory experiment and is consistent with the previously AE study of continuous rub detection in turbo-alternators, it is best validated through positive correlation with actual rotor or stator damage. Fortunately, it was possible to conduct a visual inspection of the inter-stage seals and end-glands for the suspect LP rotor within one week of the AE measurement. This end-gland damage was undoubtedly caused by full-annular rubbing. In addition, the location of this continuous rub damage was in very close agreement with the AE diagnosis whilst the turbine unit was in operation.

One week after conducting this test and presenting the AE diagnosis results to the station manager, it was possible to inspect the bare LP rotors from this high merit 500 MW unit, as it became necessary to take it out of service for maintenance to an outer rotor shroud. Fig. 12 shows the LP3 rotor as it was being lifted out of the turbine. By inspecting each rotor, it was apparent that the inter-stage seals were all in good order as illustrated by the inter-stage seal from the LP3 rotor shown in Fig. 13(a). In fact, there was no visual evidence of any interstage seal rubbing at any position on the LP rotors. In contrast, it was immediately evident that the LP3 end-gland situated closest to bearing-10 had incurred signicant rub damage as indicated in Fig. 13(b). As shown, obvious attening and shining of the end-gland tips had occurred around the entire circumference of the rotor. It was estimated that the surface area of the tipfaces across the three sets of damaged glands was at least

6. Conclusions Ultimately, a new condition monitoring technique for such economically important industrial machinery is only accepted after extensive validation and testing within the eld. As such, this paper constitutes a contribution to AE based condition monitoring of turbines as it presents validated AE diagnosis of the important condition of continuous rubbing in real operational plant. The AE diagnosis of the operational unit was supported by the preliminary experiments conducted on continuous rubbing within the laboratory. Moreover, the existence of the pseudo-sinusoidal modulation at the bearing close to the rubbing was consistent with the ndings of the only previous study sponsored by Hitachi Research Laboratory in which continuous rubbing was

Fig. 13. (a) Undamaged inter-stage seals. (b) Continuous rub damage on end-glands.

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induced upon a turbine unit [Sato]. However, perhaps the most convincing evidence for the viability of continuous rub diagnosis was provided by the post-inspection of the rotors. In particular, the location of continuous rub damage at the bearing-10 end-glands was diagnosed successfully using the AE technique. As identied in the laboratory, the AE modulation observed consistently for the test rig constitutes an important phenomenon characteristic of the continuous rub condition. Clearly, any low frequency 50 Hz vibration signal could not be recorded directly by the AE system due to the extensive high-pass ltering within the preamplier and acquisition card. Hence, the AE modulation can be reasonably attributed to uctuations in the continuous rub contact force as the rotor whirls. Hence, the raw AE data or rf signal is clearly a vital carrier of information pertaining to continuous rubbing. Thus demodulation techniques are very important signal processing techniques for continuous rub detection and even gaining an estimate of the rub forces or severity. In addition, the authors postulate that the rf signal itself may also hold useful statistical indicators of rub conditions. Clearly, the observed amplitude modulation highlights that continuous rubbing is intrinsically linked to rotor dynamics and the AE response measured at the bearings will change accordingly. Consequently, it is believed that further more detailed research into continuous rubbing should consider rotor dynamics and possibly compare and contrast vibration data with the envelope from the AE sensors. However, at this stage it is argued that AE provides the only useful real-time porthole by which detailed rotorstator interaction can be observed.

Acknowledgements The authors wish to express their gratitude to Dr. Mark Smart, Dr. Rob Herbert and Mr. Chris White of Innogy PLC for sponsoring the project into AE monitoring of large scale turbines and allowing access to operational units.

References
[1] I. Sato, Rotating machinery diagnosis with acoustic emission techniques, Electr. Eng. Jpn. 2 (1990) 110. [2] C.B. Board, Stress wave analysis of turbine engine faults, Aerospace Conference, IEEE Proceedings (Cat. No.00TH8484) 6 (2000) 7993. [3] L.D. Hall, D. Mba, The detection of shaft-seal rubbing in large scale turbines using acoustic emission, 14th International Congress on Condition Monitoring and Diagnostic Engineering Management (COMADEM2001), Manchester, UK, 46 September 2001, pp. 2128, ISBN 0080440363. [4] A. Muszynska, Rotorstationary element rub-related vibration phenomena in rotating machinery-literature survey, Shock Vibrat. Dig. 121 (3) (1989) 311. [5] Kaiser, PhD thesis, Technische Hochschule Munich, 1950. [6] D. Mba, Condition monitoring of slow speed rotating machinery using stress waves: Part 1 and Part 2, J. Process Mech. Eng., I Mech. E. Pro. Inst. Mech. Eng., Part E 213 (1999). [7] T.J. Holroyd, N. Randall, Use of acoustic emission for machine condition monitoring, Brit. J. Non-Destr. Test. 35 (2) (1993) 7578. [8] S. Bagnoli, R. Capitani, P. Citti, Comparison of accelerometer and acoustic emission signals as diagnostic tools in assessing bearing, in: Proceedings of 2nd International Conference on Condition Monitoring, London, UK, May 1988, pp. 117125. [9] M.W. Hawman, W.S. Galinaitis, Acoustic emission monitoring of rolling element bearings, in: Proceeding of the IEEE 1988 Ultrasonics Symposium, pp. 885889.