Sensing360’s Fiber Optics Catch Gearbox Failures Early

Eric van Genuchten, COO and Co-founder of Sensing360, explains how
fiber optic technology is changing gearbox monitoring by catching
failures that standard vibration sensors miss. The company's system
uses light-based sensors mounted directly onto planetary gearboxes
to measure tiny steel deformations and load changes, providing
early warning for the 10% of catastrophic failures current
monitoring can't detect. Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our
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show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on
wind. Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering.
Tomorrow I am here with Eric van Genuchten. Uh, so Eric is the COO
and Co-founder of Sensing 360. Um, and they are bringing optics,
um, to monitoring for gearbox, other rotational equipment. Uh,
we're gonna talk a little bit about what that means for the wind
industry today, implementation retrofits, uh, from the factory, all
kinds of good stuff. So, Eric, can you give us a little bit of a,
of your background? What's, what makes you an expert in the
space?  Eric van Genuchten: Uh, that's a good question.
So basically my background is. Uh, I studied physics when I was
much younger than I'm now, so, uh, I'm not gonna disclose when,
but, uh, I've been working since roughly 20 years and I have a
background in SKF in the [00:01:00] bearing, uh, uh,
manufacturing space. And basically I've been working within SKF as
condition monitoring, uh, solution developer. So I've been in
condition monitoring for almost 15 years now. And from SKF, where
we developed, uh, condition monitoring systems for all kind of
applications, but also wind of course, we went towards, um, load
sensing of barrens to be very specific to help our large customers.
And for that we used, uh, fiber sensing. And, uh, eight years ago,
seven and a half years ago, uh, I started with two colleagues. I
started sensing 360. Which is the 360 is of course the rotation,
but we are using five optical sand or optics, uh, for rotating
equipment, mainly bearings, large bearings, gear boxes. And uh, we
have been focusing a lot on wind, uh, the last five years, uh,
mainly on the planetary gearbox because that's a challenging part
from the rotating, uh, [00:02:00] system to monitor. So
that's where we, uh, think we can add some value.  Joel
Saxum: So I know like, uh, I, I wanna share this with the
users too. Our listeners here too, because I came across your
technology man, three, four or five years ago or something, uh,
over in Europe. I, I think it was, we were in Copenhagen, wind,
Europe and Copenhagen. Um, and I remember seeing you guys in like
the startup space and I walked over and you had like, basically
what looked to be, um, a stainless steel bearing race on the, on
the table. With your sensor package on it and a live readout. And I
looked at it and I went to pick it up and I was like, this is
interesting. And when I picked it up, just my hand on it, I looked
at the screen and I could see all the deflections happening on the
screen from just me grabbing this. And I mean, it was, I mean, you
remember what the product thing there was? It was probably four
millimeters thick of stainless steel. Like that's not, I'm not
squishing that thing with my hand, but you could see it. Eric van
Genuchten: Yeah, no, a lot of people checked if we had a
camera around it to see if they were mimicking the move. But
basically, [00:03:00] if you ring about it, it's, it's
this, this product still, we still have it, it's still operational.
And this is the, the, the type of bearing a small, relatively small
one for, for let's say, um, wind. But it's, uh, 22 kilotons of
bearing and you can still see the pinching of your arms. So, uh,
indeed. And that's basically what we do. We, we, we integrate our
sensors in steel and make, uh, I don't say stupid steel smart, or
if you put it around, we made rotating equipment smarter if you
rephrase it vaguely, basically. Joel Saxum: I like that. I
like that. So, um, you know, in the wind industry, if you're, if
you talk about the past, the past was. Uh, when blades were
shorter, of course now everybody's worried about blades, blades,
blades. That's what we hear all the time. But when blades were
shorter and more robust, the problem was gear boxes. It was, what
are we doing about this rotating equipment? We're having failures.
This is a, this is a regular thing. Um, we've gotten a little bit
past that, um, with. Better
bearing [00:04:00] technology, more iterations of gear
boxes, different things of this sort. But there's still issues out
there. Um, and, but this is your mission statement, right? So can
you describe the problem of basically what you guys see in the
field and what you're trying to solve?  Eric van
Genuchten: Yeah, so the problem in the field where we see
gearbox specific and also what has been accomplished with several
OEMs, because we, we like to work with customers because that
basically brings the real problems outside is, is still. And it's,
it's valid for all slowly rotating equipment, but it's still, uh,
if it's slowly rotating, there's a lot, a lot of energy to do the
classical, more classical vibration monitoring. So you have a
challenge to predict failures, and that's what we are still, uh,
focusing on eliminating failure. So let's say in a bare main
bearing, they get 99% of the failures by vibration monitoring. In
the high speed shop bearing, they get the same amount, but in the.
Gear In the gearbox, they get 90%, so there's still 10% of fillers
they cannot detect. And [00:05:00] planetary gearbox
fillers are pretty catastrophic. They are, let's say, huge
replacements, cranes downtime. So, um, yeah, we, we want to predict
it better. And secondly, um. Like all rotating parts basically. Do
you translate the rotation to It's the fixed world and it's, it's
as we say, I used to say the bearing is not, the victim is not the
cause, but the victim of a failure. Um, it is, you can derive
almost all your running conditions from that single point of, uh,
measurement. So operation conditions, misbalance unbalance where,
so you can make predictions about, this is my. Yeah, statement
prediction about this is the drive line. And of course, as you
mentioned, a wind turbine is not only a drive line, the weakest
link kind of defines the total life, but the drive line is an
essential part of it. Uh, so it's still a complex system to
monitor. It currents [00:06:00] current vibration
monitoring, and we, we add basically load and strain sensing
towards it. Therefore we do better predictions.  Joel
Saxum: Yeah, because I mean, the answer here is, or the, the,
what we're trying to arrive at is we want to have early prediction
of what would be a failure, right? Because we want the up tower
repair. We want the 20, 30, 40, $50,000 repair versus the. 300,000,
$400,000 repair where you're replacing gear boxes or planetary or
all kinds of things of that sort. Um, so the tech, the technology
that you guys have, of course you're using fiber optics, which we
can, you can arrive at, uh, a much more finite measurement. Can you
explain how that works? I guess let's take the first, the, the, the
first side of it. Let's explain how it works, if it's integrated,
say from an OEM standpoint. Yeah.  Eric van
Genuchten: So  Joel Saxum: if it's  Eric van
Genuchten: integrated from an OE EM standpoint, and we're
working with two. Two of them, and there's not that many. So
basically when you integrate it, you put it directly on the outside
of the, the ring gear, so the freely accessible site,
uh, [00:07:00] uh, part of the system, and it's directly
put on the outside. And as you mentioned, you can integrate more
very sensitive sensors. And due to the fact that you have more
sensors and that they're so sensitive, you can distinguish between
temperature, uh, loading, uh, misbalance, so you have more
information than just one. Basic string gauge. Uh, so we integrated
on the outside. Then basically when the planets are rolling, so you
have the planets and you have the sun, the planets are rotating. It
presses basically the steel way. And we measure that. And that
measurement can be done, integrated at the OEM. And then, uh, you
get a, a smart gearbox basically, which measures, uh, torque and
load sharing and used for prediction, even as you mentioned. To
prevent the, the, the, the small opt tower repairs or to actually
to prevent the big non-op tower repairs, but do the small opt
towers, repairs, and even winning time if you have to replace it
anyways, the whole logistics saves a lot of money and time if you
know it six months upfront instead of
two [00:08:00] weeks. Joel Saxum: So speaking of
OEMs though, right, because of course weather guard here, we're an
aftermarket product company and we speak with OEMs about
integrating from the factory level and, and those kind of things
quite regularly, uh, as well as operators, right? You're starting
to see operators put aftermarket solutions that they've deemed to
be good in their turbine supply agreements are in their turbine
RFPs. Hey, hey. OEMs, we want this. Um, you guys are working
directly with OEMs. That's a tough thing to do. Congrats on that.
Right? Um, so what are they using it for? What I mean, of course we
know sensing, right? But if it's, it's an advanced thing. It's not
on every turbine. Why, why your system? Why, why are they using it?
Eric van Genuchten: The main reasons, the two main reasons to
use it maybe have to make three reasons to use it, is the.