Modern steam turbine generators are being built as a higher power and larger system, experiencing more frequent starts and stops of operation due to a constant change of power demands. Hence, they are inevitably more vulnerable to various vibrations, and more often exposed to the danger of sudden vibration accidents than ever before. Even under the circumstances, in order to secure the system reliability of steampower plants and there by to supply safely the public electricity, it is important to prevent a sudden vibration accident in one hand and even when it happens, to raise an operating efficiency of the plants throught swift and precise treatments in the other. In this study, an interactive vibration diagnostic system has been developed to make the on-site vibration diagnosis of steam turbine generators possible and convenient, utilizing a note-book PC. For this purpose, at first the principal vibration phenomena, such as various unbalance and unstable vibrations as well as rubbing, misalignment, and shaft crack vibrations, have been systematically classified as grouped parameters of vibration frequencies, amplitudes, phases, rotating speeds at the time of accident, and operating conditions or condition changes. A new complex vibration diagnostic table has been constructed from the causal relations between the characteristic parameters and the principal vibration phenomena. Then, the diagnostic system has been developed to screen and issue the corresponding vibration phenomena by assigning to each user-selected combination of characteristic parameters a unique characteristic vector and comparing this vector with a diagnostic vector of each vibration phenomenon based on the constructed diagnostic table. Moreover, the diagnostic system has a logic whose diagnosis may be performed successfully by inputing only some of the corresponding characteristic parameters without having to input all the parameters. The developed diagnostic system has been applied to perform the diagnosis of several real cases of steam turbine vibration accidents. And the results have been quite satisfactory.
