Using Vibration Signals for Cavitation Monitoring in Centrifugal Pumps

Cavitations phenomenon is one of the sources of inefficiently operation in a centrifugal pump and also cause reduction in capacity of the pump, decrease in head, blade erosion and corrosion, structure vibration and noise. This paper presents a method for cavitation monitoring of pumps using vibration signal analysis of a centrifugal pump. In this study, cavitation phenomena in centrifugal pump have been simulated by an experimental setup. Vibration signals of the pump have been measured during cavity inception and propagation. Finally, the cavitation effects on the parameters extracted from vibration signals using conventional and advanced signal processing methods in time, frequency and time-frequency domain have been investigated. The results indicate sensitive parameters to cavitation in pump which can be used to design a cavitation condition monitoring system based on vibration signals.