An OPR-Free Blade Tip Timing Method for Rotating Blade Condition Monitoring

Blade tip timing (BTT) is a noncontact blade vibration measurement method for rotating blade condition monitoring. However, it is difficult to install a once-per-revolution (OPR) probe due to the internal environment limitation of an engine. To solve this problem, an OPR-free BTT method is proposed in this article. Compared with the existing OPR-free methods that are based on blade displacement, this method is based on blade spacing change (BSC). In addition, a probe layout selection method based on minimum redundancy linear array (MRLA) is introduced to reduce the redundancy of the acquired signal. Simulations are conducted to prove that the proposed probe layout selection method has a stronger signal extraction capability and better robustness. The experiment is conducted to show that BSC is an alternative way for rotating blade condition monitoring and the technical route of this article is feasible.