ABSTRACT
There are four kinds of maintenance: reactive maintenance, scheduled maintenance, condition-based maintenance, and maintenance elimination. This chapter focuses on condition-based maintenance. Condition monitoring has existed since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution at least, in the form of the human being’s natural senses. In a modern sense, another form of condition monitoring is the control desk in the plant or the dashboard in a car. The chapter discusses in detail the three main technologies of condition monitoring: vibration analysis (including acoustic monitoring), oil analysis, and thermography. The main use of thermography is in detecting electrical faults. Thermography does have applications for mechanical components as well and can be used to detect high temperatures in bearings, drive belts, steam traps and piping insulation. It can also detect hot spots in refractories, heat exchangers and building insulation. The infrastructure needed for thermography is much less than that needed for vibration monitoring or oil monitoring.
