{"id":43663,"date":"2026-05-17T17:24:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T11:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.verdantis.com\/?p=43663"},"modified":"2026-06-04T17:45:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T12:15:31","slug":"vibration-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.verdantis.com\/de\/vibration-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Vibration Analysis Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Machines that seem to be running fine are often close to a breakdown. Most of these warnings are not visible, and vibration analysis makes them visible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A pump can sound smooth, a motor can sound normal, and the production continues. But a bearing inside that machine may already be wearing out. A shaft may be drifting out of alignment, or a rotor may be moving out of balance. By the time maintenance catches these issues, the failure might already have occurred. Vibration analysis, on the other hand, can catch a bearing fault six weeks early, identify a misaligned shaft before damage occurs to a coupling, and a rotor imbalance before it can take out the entire gearbox.<\/span><\/p>

Every rotating asset produces a vibration signature that reflects how the machine is behaving internally. When something changes inside that machine, the vibration pattern changes first, long before a breakdown, long before a shutdown, and weeks before visible symptoms.<\/span><\/p>

Vibration analysis is the discipline that captures these changes and interprets them correctly. Maintenance teams then move from reacting to failures to detecting them early. In asset\u2011heavy industries, vibration analysis works well when paired with clean, governed MRO and master data. It can help reduce downtime by up to <\/span>60%<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>

In this guide, let\u2019s understand vibration analysis in detail.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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What is Vibration Analysis?<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Vibration analysis measures how a machine vibrates and uses the data to understand what’s happening inside it. It is a diagnostic process that turns machine motion into usable information that teams can use to detect, monitor, and prevent failures before they happen. Industry data suggests that vibration analysis can identify <\/span>90% <\/span><\/a>of potential failure causes in rotating equipment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The vibrations induced by each moving part of every machine are not random; instead, they always have regular patterns. In vibration analysis, sensors collect the motion, and the signal is processed with respect to three parameters:<\/span><\/p>

  1. Amplitude<\/b>: It shows how strong the vibration is. A rise in amplitude may indicate something is getting worse within that machine.<\/span><\/li>
  2. Frequency<\/b>: It shows how often the vibration occurs. A specific frequency peak may point directly to a bearing fault or imbalance.<\/span><\/li>
  3. Phase<\/b>: It shows how different vibration points relate to each other. A phase shift between two points may be due to a misalignment across a coupling.\u00a0<\/span><\/li><\/ol>

    The vibration signals of a working machine are acquired as a time waveform or are transformed into a frequency spectrum by using methods such as FFT. It breaks the signal into frequency components, and identifying those individual frequency components will inform you of something different about the state of the machine.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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    When to Add Phase Analysis?<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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    Amplitude and frequency analyses are telling you something is wrong and pointing you to the component that’s not functioning properly. The phase tells you how the system is running internally.<\/span><\/p>

    Phase describes the time relationship between vibration signals. You don’t ask how strong a vibration is or how often it occurs, but it shows how different parts of the machine move related to each other. Occasionally, two points on a machine can move in unison, they can move in opposite directions, or they can move with a lag between them. This is computed as an angle from 0\u00b0 to 360\u00b0.<\/span><\/p>

    Some faults may look similar in the spectrum. For example:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>