Three Vibration/Balancing Solutions for the Aviation Industry

Throughout the aviation industry, whether commercial or military, jet engine vibration is an everyday concern. Maintenance, repair, and overhaul crews worldwide are tasked with monitoring aircraft engine vibration to ensure flight safety and efficient service.

Gone unchecked, jet engine vibration can be the catalyst for any number of problems, from minor annoyances such as cabin noise to undue parts wear. In the most severe cases, an out-of-balance turbine could lead to catastrophic failure from metal fatigue or cracks in rotor structures.

Overall gas turbine engine vibration, however, is actually the summation of vibration contributions from a variety of moving parts within the engine.

To correlate vibration magnitude with specific engine components, maintenance engineers rely on vibration analysis and trim balancing tools. Vibration analysis detects discrepancies in rotational machine dynamics while trim balancing is used to reduce vibration amplitudes of gas turbine shafts.

Together, they help engineers ascertain and correct individual sources of vibration within an engine.

This paper provides a quick overview of aerospace engine testing solutions for engine vibration/balancing as well as signal conditioning technology from MTI instruments.