A new non-destructive method for fault diagnosis of reciprocating compressor by measuring the piston rod strain

As an established method to analyse the thermodynamic process inside the cylinder, the p-V diagram can identify typical faults such as leakages through the sealing rings and self-acting valves, loosening and fluttering of the vales, etc. However, the installation of the pressure sensor within the cylinder for recording the p-V diagram may lead to degradation of the cylinder integrity, and hereby potential leakage and lowered strength of the cylinder. This paper presents a new non-destructive method for fault diagnosis of the reciprocating compressor by measuring the piston rod strain, from which the p-V diagram was transformed. An algorithm for reconstruction of the p-V diagram was proposed based on the key feature points on the piston rod load curve that reflect the opening and closing events of the compressor valves. The reconstruction method was validated by comparing the calculated p-V diagrams with the experimental results. The reconstructed p-V diagrams were further used for fault diagnosis of the reciprocating compressors, with which the acoustic emission method was integrated. The results show that this method can easily monitor the working conditions and identify whether and where leakage, fluttering and delayed closing of the valves occur, which indicates that this method can be utilized as a powerful tool of non-destructive condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of the reciprocating compressors.