Vibration analysis and thermography techniques are both commonly used for proactive and predictive maintenance in industrial plants. Historically, these two technologies have been separate and distinct. The present work aims to perform a comparative study as an attempt to obtain the reliability of a two techniques in analyzing and diagnosing the misalignment problem at a pumping system. Vibration measurements were performed to evaluate the dynamic state of the pumping system under the effect of misalignment. The thermal imaging camera was used to early detect misalignment problem by measuring the temperature of the coupling and bearings for different values of misalignment. Laser alignment process between motor and pump was done to correct the misalignment problem. Comparison between vibration and temperature measurements before and after alignment process was applied. The results had shown that the data acquired by the vibration signal processing and thermal images are all relevant between them. It has been found that the use of vibration analysis was more effective in detecting the misalignment problem than thermography analysis.
Keywords: vibration analysis; misalignment problem; thermography analysis; centrifugal pump.
