Fibre-Optic Load Sensing to Monitor Rotating EquipmentSensing360 recently released ‘the smart photonic sleeve’ to monitor the load applied on rotating equipment, like bearings and gears. Besides the standardised smart sleeve that serves a broad range of load sensing applications, the company’s fibre-optic sensing technology can also be used for customer specific solutions. Here we show a customer case where Sensing360 has provided a solution to monitor and verify strain levels in the stationary outer ring of a multimegawatt planetary gearbox. Algorithms have been developed that translate these strain signals into crucial engineering and operating parameters such as planet load sharing and torque.
By Georgo Angelis, Sensing360 and Unai Gutierrez Santiago, Siemens Gamesa
