Monitoring the condition of nuclear pumps, electronic data logging

The main goals of the "MONITORING THE CONDITION OF NUCLEAR PUMPS, ELECTRONIC DATA LOGGING" project were twofold:
1) Introducing continuous and automated data logging from all pump and motor sensors to the nuclear pump industry, together with powerful data analysis tools. The aim being capturing the full picture of pump behaviour, both during acceptance tests and in the field, which often escape the limited view obtained through discrete manual instrument readings.
2) Developing and applying remote realtime data access and analysis capabilities, to support the remote monitoring and diagnostic of pumps already deployed in the field.
The first aim was fully achieved. A fully integrated data acquisition system for pump testing was developed by Cosworth, including hardware, software extensions and logging/user interface configuration. This system was deployed and used to successfully acquire data from two full pump tests (all the tests allowed by the testing schedule). Following the initial test, a facility to automatically null sensor values before the start of a test was added, to achieve direct equivalency to manual readings.
Test operators were able to successfully operate the system to null channels and log the data, both as continuous time traces and as averages during “sample” periods. This was done through the user-friendly graphical system interface, featuring buttons, dials, bar displays, numerical displays and graphical charts.
Analysis of time-trace data was initially conducted by Cosworth and it soon revealed correlations not obvious from the discrete manual data samples, such as connections between pump load and average axis displacements. The depth of the first analysis was only limited by the number and type of sensors that could be fitted for the test.
The intention is that when the industrial partner Clyde Union adopts the system, their own engineers would be trained to use Pi Toolbox to do the time-trace data analysis themselves, so that the results can be readily fed back to pump design.
Regarding the second aim, remote data access and analysis capabilities, these facilities were built into the system, but were not used during the initial tests due to the lack of Internet connectivity on site. The remote functionality is most relevant to monitoring loggers fitted to pumps installed in remote sites. One of the lessons learned form the initial tests is that factory floor Internet connectivity tends to be limited in availability and bandwidth, so remote access would typically be limited to remote use of analysis tools running locally on the logger and the remote upload of “aggregated” data (averages, peaks, alarms).
In summary, the project proved that the acquisition of test data can be automated in a user-friendly way and that the resulting data set is much richer than discrete manual samples. It also set the basis for a further reaching collaboration between Cosworth and its industrial partner Clyde Union, which should lead to the wider deployment of factory test equipment and the eventual development of a rugged logger for remote site deployment.