Validating Blade Vibration Amplitudes from Blade Tip-Timing Data Analysis

Blade Tip-Timing (BTT) is a method for the measurement of blade vibration in rotating bladed assemblies such as those found in turbomachinery. BTT data needs to be analysed by specially formulated methods, to yield the vibration frequencies and amplitudes. Although such methods have been shown to recover frequencies successfully, they have not been validated experimentally for amplitude recovery. In the present paper an improved experimental procedure for amplitude measurement is described. The paper presents a comparison between the experimental observation of the blade vibration amplitudes and the answers obtained from the BTT data analysis methods, providing experimental evidence of the ability of these methods to extract the correct blade vibration amplitudes from BTT data.